REPowerEU is the Green Deal on steroids

On the second day of the EU Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW), I had the privilege of interviewing, live on stage, the Deputy Director General of DG Energy, Mechthild Wörsdörfer.

And she was crystal clear from the beginning. "REPowerEU is the EU Commission's answer to the war in Ukraine". Wörsdörfer added, however, that it is also about "accelerating the ambitious goals of the Green Deal and Fit for 55 and about decreasing our dependency on fossil fuels even faster."

According to the Deputy Director General there are three main objectives when it comes to the plan: "The first one is energy efficiency and energy savings". It makes sense, both for consumers and for the industry. When it comes to demand reduction, small behavioural changes can do the trick.

The second: "Diversification. We have learned our lesson, that one shouldn't be dependent on one single supplier." And although this was a painful lesson; we have now decreased our gas dependency on Russia, from 40% at the beginning of the year to 9% as we approach the end of 2022; it is nevertheless impressive.

And how did that happen? By "reaching out to our key partners in the US and Norway and Azerbaijan and Algeria and many others. We have much more LNG imports, which has its price but helped secure filling our storage, which was important" the Deputy Director General said.

And the third: "The green energy transition. So, rapid deployment of renewables, but also all other low carbon clean sources in that context, like hydrogen" she said.

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Speaking of renewables, however, the length of permitting processes for renewable projects can be a discouraging factor both for businesses and citizens. One wonders how the commission plans to tackle the problem, right?

Mechthild Wörsdörfer mentioned a right balance between environmental concerns and going forward with our projects. The environment is always a priority for the European Commission, but we should not wait a decade for a wind farm to get permission. "Our proposal" said Wörsdörfer "respects the environment, but also shortens the time to about two years for permission. And for solar rooftops, or solar in an agricultural country, it will be even faster.".

Another point we discussed at the EUSEW regarded the exceptional electricity demand reduction and the EU Commission's "emergency package". It was only a couple of weeks ago, after all, that the Greek government admitted that from the 1st of November 2022 until the 31st of March 2023, some short black outs could perhaps happen.

Well, the Deputy Director General of DG Energy said she hoped that, in the end, this would not be the case: "but I think what is clear is that we are in an unprecedented energy crisis. We have the security of supply issue and we have extremely high energy prices, which affect not only our vulnerable consumers, but now also the middle income consumers. It affects industry, it affects small and medium sized business. And that is extremely serious".

So what the commission has done with REPowerEU is to create "a package of emergency measures to really look at the root cause, which for us is really supply and demand".

At the end of our discussion, I asked the Deputy Director General if she feels optimistic about our collective near future. Her answer impressed me. She said: "I am optimistic, but I'm not naïve. The challenges we've had so far were big - as I said, we never had such a crisis before. And we will face a tough winter. But we do our utmost with all the member states and stakeholders to be prepared".

So, solidarity towards a common goal is the way for Europe. Achievable, because as a Union, not only do we have a good plan, we also have a tight but feasible schedule to follow, in order to achieve it.

What have I taken with me from this trip to Brussels and my discussion with Mechthild Wörsdörfer? There is a difficult path ahead of us, but it seems like we got this. What do you think?

Cheers, Areti