Responding to a public consultation, PU Europe today called on the European Commission to include comprehensive energy savings actions in the review of the EU’s Energy Strategy 2011-2020.

Background:

The Commission sees the overall goal of the EU’s energy policy in ensuring that consumers and enterprises obtain safe, secure, sustainable and low-carbon energy at affordable and competitive prices while ensuring supply security, combating climate change and stimulating growth and jobs.

PU Europe welcomed the Commission’s intention to develop a far-reaching energy policy framework for the period 2011-2020. However, PU Europe believes that these goals will not be achieved without a comprehensive and ambitious policy towards saving energy.

Investments in energy savings, especially in buildings which account for 40% of the EU’s primary energy use, tackle all of the issues identified by the Commission at a negative cost, i.e. they save money. Most supply side measures will not show the same level of cost-effectiveness.

Oliver Loebel, the PU Europe secretary general commented: “In spite of all these positive side effects, Member States are unlikely to make full use of the energy savings potential as long as all related targets remain indicative. The June European Council clearly confirmed this assumption.”

With this in mind, PU Europe calls for the following actions to be included in the Energy Action Plan:

• Provisions to make the 20% overall energy savings target binding;

• A strategy towards doubling the rates of deep renovation in existing buildings;

• The revision of the Energy Efficiency Action Plan which should include provisions for binding building refurbishment targets and the revision of the Energy services directive;

• Strategies to overcome bottlenecks in financing energy savings;

• A European training and education strategy for the energy efficiency workforce;

• Ambitious actions to encourage the implementation of existing legislation;

• A study comparing the effects of financial incentives for energy efficiency and investments in supply capacity and CCS on public budgets.

“All the figures are at the table. It is now the responsibility of the European Commission to present an ambitious 2020 vision making full use of cost-effective energy savings potentials. It is good to know that the European Parliament would fully support this approach”, Loebel concluded.

The letter is available here.

For more details, please contact

PU Europe

Email: secretariat@pu-europe.eu Website: www.pu-europe.eu

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29 June 2010