DG Energy Newsletter

DG ENER’s Director for the Green Transition & Energy System Integration, Catharina Sikow-Magny reflects on the situation for renewables in the context of the energy crisis – the recently agreed changes to the renewables directive, and the prospects for hydrogen and biomethane. She also explains how previous infrastructure investment helped the EU respond to the energy crisis last year and the priorities for future investment. Finally, she shares her thoughts on the Electricity Market Design proposal and ongoing moves to push for action on methane emissions.

By leveraging its collective economic weight, the EU managed to attract bids from a total number of 25 supplying companies equivalent to more than 13.4 billion cubic meters of gas (bcm) – surpassing the 11.6 bcm of joint demand that EU companies submitted through the recently established AggregateEU mechanism.

Lower energy prices in recent months have been a significant factor in supporting moderate growth in the EU economy so far this year.

The aim of this partnership is to identify skill needs and develop appropriate curricula and training programmes to ensure that the energy-intensive industries workforce has the right skills for them to remain leaders in the green and digital transition.

On 24 April, the EU and Norway established a Green Alliance to strengthen their joint climate action, environmental protection efforts, and cooperation on the clean energy and industrial transition.

The LIFE Call for Proposals 2023 is inviting stakeholders actively working on accelerating the clean energy transition and decarbonising Europe to submit their project ideas until 16 November 2023.

The new call addresses studies and works for PCIs and it will be open until 5 September 2023.

One project has been selected requesting EUR 252.500 of EU funding for preparatory studies that will help to assess the feasibility of a potential offshore wind farm of a capacity of approx. 300 MW.

The situation varied across the EU countries, with the largest share of people unable to keep their home adequately warm reported in Bulgaria (24%), Lithuania (23%), Cyprus (19%), Greece (18%) and Portugal (16%).

The EU consumption of natural gas has dropped by 17.7% in the period August 2022-March 2023, compared with the average gas consumption for the same months between 2017 and 2022.

On 18 May it will be one year since the EU presented the REPowerEU Plan to end our dependency on Russian fossil fuels and diversify our energy sources. We have since built partnerships with more reliable energy partners including Norway and the U.S and filled Europe’s gas reserves to record high levels. One year on, not only have we ensured a secure energy supply and shielded our citizens from the worst of the market volatility, we have doubled-down on our Green Deal and energy efficiency commitments.