Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good afternoon, everybody, including those following us online.
Let me first thank the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilites for co-hosting today’s Energy Infrastructure Forum. Unfortunately, Minister Aagaard could not be here in person, I send him my best wishes.
As always, it’s a pleasure to be here in Copenhagen. In many ways, this edition of the Forum is a special one. It’s the 10th edition, my 5th as Energy Commissioner, and the last of my mandate. We’re also marking 10 years of the Connecting Europe Facility.
With these milestones, it makes sense to look back and take stock of progress over the past five years. I remember my first Energy Infrastructure Forum, back in October 2020. The Green Deal was still in its early days.
We knew that change was on the horizon. We knew that, if we were to deliver on our climate targets, we had to decarbonise our energy system and accelerate the transition across the whole economy.
Then Russia’s unjustified war against Ukraine happened. Our neighbour and ally. This was our wake-up call to diversify our energy supplies and go all in on the transition.
Under the REPower EU Plan, we spearheaded a radical and deep transformation of our energy system. We diversified away from Russian fossil imports. We witnessed remarkable growth in renewable energy sources.
Last year, the share of renewables in the electricity generation mix jumped to almost 45%. In all these efforts, we rediscovered an old lesson: any energy transition must rest on one fundamental pillar: And that is a reliable, secure, fit for the future infrastructure.
That’s why, since the start, we have put in place the building blocks to ensure that new networks match new energy trade flows. And that new clean sources of power can be readily plugged into our energy system. Already in 2020, I proposed a complete overhaul of Europe’s infrastructure policy. The new TEN-E Regulation moved away from oil and gas infrastructure to focus on future-proof electricity and hydrogen networks.
Offshore wind energy became the new outlook. Now, under the revised TEN-E policy, we finally have a list of projects of common and mutual interest adapted to this new age of renewables. It includes 166 strategic projects for the EU, the majority in electricity, but also hydrogen and electrolysers, and CO2 networks.
These projects are coming off the ground thanks to funding under the Connecting Europe Facility. I mentioned earlier that the Facility is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
In the past ten years, this programme has allocated EUR 6,8 billion in funding to 65 electricity and 39 gas projects, triggering investments worth around EUR 16 billion.
CEF has played a major role in making the European gas market fully connected and resilient. Many projects have helped to diversify gas supplies for parts of Europe historically dependent on a single gas source. This source has historically been Russia.
Projects like the Krk LNG terminal, the Lithuania-Poland Interconnector GIPL, the Baltic Pipe and the Poland-Slovakia interconnector. Over the last years, CEF has shifted its focus to electricity projects.
Complex submarine interconnector projects like Biscay Bay, Celtic and Italy-Tunisia ELMED interconnectors are to be commissioned between 2025 and 2030.
And the Baltic synchronisation project will help the three Baltic States to cut – at last – its energy links with Russia and Belarus in 2025 and be synchronised with Continental Europe.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Alongside all of this, we have put in place a new regulatory framework for a cleaner and more secure European gas market. The new rules facilitate the deployment of hydrogen infrastructure and ensure decarbonised gases and hydrogen can soon flow across Europe, connecting producers and offtakers.
Other policies are also making a difference: Under the Net-Zero Industry Act, grid manufacturers will get the right support to become more competitive globally. We have also reformed the electricity market design, including important areas such as anticipatory investments and network tariff revisions. And of course, over the past year, we’ve taken the issue of electricity grids out of a blind spot and put it into the limelight.
Our new Grids Action Plan sent an important political signal. It made clear this Commission’s determination to build up our transmission and distribution grids and to tackle the bottlenecks. In just over six months, the Action Plan has already made a difference.
Today and tomorrow, we will take stock of progress. There will be a dedicated session this afternoon but let me briefly mention now the flagship action we are delivering on today. Today, the Commission has adopted the Guidance on collaborative investment frameworks for offshore renewables.
Offshore energy projects are critical for Europe and for our regions. But these projects need a lot of planning to ensure that new offshore generation can effectively reach demand centres. And this all requires significant investments.
Such investments need to be fair – based on the principle of equitable distribution of costs. The Guidance adopted and published today gives a clear direction of travel. It will help to ensure that costs and benefit analyses, as well as cost sharing and allocation activities, are based on fair principles and sound technical calculations.
We have not stopped at modelling and procedural elements. We have gone further by raising other instruments that should be discussed in our High-Level Groups and developed based on the needs of each region. This includes tools to facilitate the full use of the cost allocation mechanisms for transmission projects and tools to cover the persisting financing gap.
We hope that our new Guidance will help Member States, regulators and TSOs in their future discussions on offshore plans and projects. And of course the Commission will continue to support you, every step of the way.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The past few years have been transformational. We have made our energy networks stronger and paved the way for a cleaner and more efficient energy system. But there is still so much more to do. The events last weekend were a stark reminder of that. A major power outage hit Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania and most of Croatia’s coast.
Power was restored within around 2 hours. But it still caused huge disruption. And it highlights once again that we will have to think big about our energy infrastructure. In the next 10 to 15 years, we will have to redraw the map of infrastructure across the continent. We will need electricity super grids fit for a true Energy Union and our climate neutral objective.
The gas network will have to be repurposed to transport hydrogen or CO2. I believe that mobilising the necessary high-level public and private investment is one of the key challenges for the next institutional cycle. Europe should not shy away from this.
Building infrastructure is the best way to spur growth, create jobs, ensure market integration. Today, in this Forum, we close a chapter of five great years of work.
Together, we have laid the foundations that will shape the future of our grids towards 2030 and beyond. Let’s keep working towards a clean, affordable, secure energy system for all Europeans. I look forward to the insightful discussions and ideas that will emerge from the two days of the Forum.
Thank you for your attention.
Source – EU Commission
