Lower Costs and Increase Energy Security

After five years of economic stagnation, the European Union’s economy and finances are still experiencing hard times, and
there is an urgent need to increase competitiveness in industry. Development can only be encouraged if energy is widely available at an affordable cost and with a lower impact on the environment.

The current situation is somewhat hard to define, as on one hand there is a transition taking place towards a more efficient and sustainable energy system, but on the other ‘security of energy supply can no longer be guaranteed, CO2 emissions are currently on the rise, investments in the sector are not coming and energy bills are rising sharply’.

This is the situation that ten major European energy companies recently described to a European Parliament Energy Commission hearing in Brussels, which featured the CEOs of Enel and Eni, Fulvio Conti and Paolo Scaroni. The point was made that the European energy industry has made efforts to correct these problems, but there is a need for the creation of new and less fragmented policy that could help revitalise the energy sector.

Regarding costs, consumer bill should reflect market costs as much as possible and not be used as a vehicle for financing other things, while more mature renewable energy technology should be integrated onto the grid and development of other renewable electricity technologies should be encouraged through R&D rather than by production subsidies.

The ten representatives of the European energy industry stressed the need to limit the rising cost of energy and guarantee a reliable gas and electricity supply, which can be facilitated while also reinforcing Europe’s climate ambitions.

According to GDF-Suez President Gerard Mestrallet ‘the risk of black-outs has never been higher’ in Europe, with thermal electric power plants are closing down because they cannot compete with heavily subsidised energy produced from intermittent and unpredictable renewable sources.