Kickstart of a new European season: what is at stake for the energy sector?
The president of the European Commission presented today the key policy priorities for the upcoming months during #SOTEU2023. Here are the main energy-related points of interest.
Illustration : Guillaume Périgois, Unsplash
Today, Wednesday 13th of September, Ursula Von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, delivered her yearly Speech on the State of the European Union in front of the full hemicycle of the European Parliament. On the agenda of political priorities announced during her speech, climate and energy pale into insignificance. However, emphasis was placed on the industrial transition to climate neutrality. Here are the main points of interest:
The EU will keep supporting the transition of the industry by developing a tailor-made approach for each different ecosystem. Therefore, from September on, EU dialogues will take place to help each of the sectors to develop a comprehensive business model leading to decarbonisation.
In particular, the accent will be put on the wind industry, thanks to an European Wind Power Package, which should allow fast tracking permitting, develop skills, improve the auction system across the EU, ease the access to finance and stable supply-chains.
Other priority-sectors mentioned are steel, batteries, and electric vehicles. Notably to protect the EU internal market of electric vehicles, that is yet threatened by Chinese dumping, the EU will lead an anti-subsidy investigation into electric vehicles coming from China.
To develop a strong clean EU-industry, local value-chains need to be enforced and supported, therefore the EU will organise the first meeting of the Critical Raw Materials Club, while the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Platform to boost and leverage EU funds has been launched.
Furthermore, attention will be brought to the development of SMEs, therefore an EU SME Envoy reporting will be delivered to the President of the European Commission, to assess the challenges faced by SMEs with the new pieces of EU-legislation.
Finally, the President of the Commission recalled shortly the importance of investing in general in renewable energy, which has been highlighted by the energy crisis.
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