1st working session: energy prices for European consumers
Since last September, the European energy markets have been facing a historic crisis, caused mainly by soaring fossil fuel prices. While emergency measures have been taken at European and national level to protect consumers, the Union and the Member States must now strengthen medium and long-term strategies to guard against such situations in the future.
The 27 European Energy Ministers, Christian Busoi, Chairman of the European Parliament’s Energy Committee, Kadri Simson, Commissioner for Energy, and Christian Zinglersen, Director of the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), discussed targeted revisions to the regulations, within the framework of the objectives of the European Union, which are in particular the transition to a low-carbon economy, the security of supplies and the control of energy prices for consumers.
Several lines of work emerged from this first discussion session:
Give each consumer the means to choose the supply offer and risk exposure that best suits him, while ensuring that he is informed about the associated risks and opportunities;
Promote the sharing of decarbonization dividends with individual consumers and businesses. More concretely, in the event of strong growth in prices and, therefore, in the profits of certain producers, Member States should be allowed to recover part of them in order to be able to redistribute them to all consumers.
Perfecting the joint optimization of the means of production within the Union, thanks to more efficient short-term markets;
Deepen mutual solidarity in terms of security of supply and think about the best ways to consolidate, at the lowest cost, the investments of tomorrow in the energy transition, in particular renewable energies, but also to ensure gas supply and seek optimized use European storage capacities.
The European Commission and ACER will incorporate these different areas of reform into their discussions. The submission of the report commissioned from ACER is scheduled for next April, before the Energy Ministers meet at the Energy Council in June.
2nd working session: energy efficiency
With the proposal to revise the energy efficiency directive published by the Commission on July 14, the European Union must make significant additional efforts in terms of reducing its energy consumption by 2030, in order to be on the long-term trajectory of the Paris Agreement and the achievement of carbon neutrality by 2050. The morning of work therefore continued with a discussion on the principle of the primacy of energy efficiency.
A large majority of the Member States henceforth consider that the application of this principle must be effective in all the public policies of the Union and its Member States, while leaving the latter the minimum flexibility to adapt to the diversity of national situations.
Another point of convergence underlined by the ministers: the annual energy savings obligation plays a central role within the directive, since it represents a major lever for decarbonization and for reducing the share of households in of fuel poverty.
3rd working session: hydrogen in Europe
On December 11, 2020, the Council of Ministers adopted conclusions on hydrogen, confirming the objective of accelerating the development of decarbonized hydrogen.
As of 2020, the Commission therefore began major work on regulatory changes with the publication of its hydrogen strategy, the revision of the regulation on trans-European energy infrastructures, that of the directive on renewable energies published last July, then that of the “package gas” in December. The final stage of the informal meetings in Amiens, this working lunch thus enabled the Energy Ministers to recall their desire to create a sovereign hydrogen value chain in Europe, associated with an industrial sector. Many ministers underlined the risks associated with massive import flows, but also the need for a flexible regulatory framework for this emerging market.
The Member States all agree on the opportunity that hydrogen represents in the decarbonization of industrial activities and heavy mobility, as well as on the need to accelerate the development of European technical solutions, in particular that of electrolysis.