The author is president of the European Council
By launching a struggle on Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has additionally fired an “energy missile” at Europe. He needs to obliterate our economies, weaken our societies and destroy our morale. We should be clear-eyed in assessing the size of the harm. This disaster vindicates our widespread development technique and makes it a matter of urgency to ascertain a real power union. It shall be a vital pillar of EU sovereignty.
Energy is just like the blood working by the veins of our economies. But it’s changing into clotted by Russia’s aggressive actions. Households and firms face exorbitant power payments. The EU’s power imports within the first half of 2022 amounted to nearly €380bn, which is near what we often pay for a complete yr. Our power commerce deficit is prone to double in 2022, reaching about 5 per cent of gross home product.
This state of affairs forces us to reassess how we obtain our longer-term transition to local weather neutrality, which isn’t solely central to our environmental struggle however key to our development technique. Our path to web zero was partly predicated on ample availability of inexpensive gasoline. This is now a factor of the previous.
In Versailles, final March, EU leaders agreed to bolster European sovereignty in defence, the financial system and power. Today, we recognise the necessity for a brand new power technique in tackling this disaster and in laying the bottom for a resilient financial system.
That is why I’m calling for a real power union. It will entail revisiting lots of our longstanding beliefs and performing extra collectively, as Europeans. The power disaster has uncovered the cracks in a union composed of 27 power “private preserves”.
Just as we noticed throughout Covid-19, no nation alone can deal with a disaster of this magnitude. We should face the taboos surrounding nationwide and EU competences. A resilient power union is not going to magically seem from 27 nationwide power mixes — we should make them appropriate. This would require sturdy and honest co-ordination between states. And we must always create the required regulatory framework and market situations that finest serve the pursuits of our residents and firms.
To attain a compromise, we should come again to the values and ideas all of us imagine in. Solidarity, equity, and transparency. These are the ideas that may lead us to safety of provide, a degree taking part in area and inexpensive costs, and can restore market belief.
Our widespread power technique ought to have 4 targets. First, lowering our consumption. This shall be essential not solely this winter, however completely. We have already began on this path. It would require a substantial amount of innovation and creativity. We should be trustworthy in regards to the challenges forward.
Second, we have to guarantee safety of provide. We are diversifying away from Russian power to extra dependable suppliers. We should not repeat the errors of the previous, by changing into overdependent on a single supply. We also needs to purchase smarter. That means making higher use of our collective shopping for energy by the joint EU power platform that we determined to arrange in March, moderately than competing and driving up costs.
A different power combine will scale back the chance of power dependency. This contains renewables, corresponding to photo voltaic, wind and geothermal power, in addition to hydrogen. We shouldn’t be complacent. We have to replicate on our competitiveness in mild of measures taken by others, each within the area of inexperienced and non-green hydrogen. It additionally contains nuclear, an power supply that may assist guarantee a dependable and versatile electrical energy system, whereas supporting our web zero goal.
Third, we should get costs down. Our electrical energy market was conceived in one other time for one more time. If we need to scale back consumption, diversify and obtain web zero, we have to make investments extra in analysis, innovation and know-how. The finest method to scale back costs is to take a extra collective method.
Our widespread power technique ought to reinforce the cohesion of our single market. As we noticed in the beginning of the pandemic, the official actions taken by governments to guard their households and companies could cause imbalances. This creates an impression of unfairness. And it in the end endangers the dynamism of the only market, certainly one of our most treasured property.
The world monetary disaster and sovereign debt disaster spurred the EU to create a banking union, to make sure the steadiness of the banking sector. The pandemic taught us to pool our assets within the well being sector. This is how we developed and produced vaccines for all EU residents, regardless of the place they lived.
We should now do the identical within the power sector and arrange this real power union. Doing too little too late will not be an possibility. It’s time to take a quantum leap.
