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REPowerEU: meeting with European Commission

On the 23rd of June, the FEDARENE office, our Secretary General Seamus Hoyne and Vice-President for Climate Neutrality Christiane Egger met with representatives of the Energy Efficiency Unit from DG ENER. The objective was to exchange on the best ways forward as regards the role that regions and local communities could have in the implementation of REPower EU.

Illustration : FEDARENE

This allowed Seamus Hoyne to present FEDARENE’s recommendations on priority areas for REPowerEU, possible contribution of energy agencies and FEDARENE repository of solutions. The Commission presented very broadly the “save energy” components of the REPowerEU package (see FEDARENE briefing).

Discussions focused on recommendations on energy sufficiency, the relevance of “energy efficiency first” principle vs carbon to drive ambitious energy policies, renovation (energy agencies upscaling at amazing speed these past 6 months; demand growing exponentially), how to communicate with companies/SMEs, the ability of energy agencies to assist the Commission in rolling out local campaigns to save energy and amplify locally EU messages…

The unit expressed interest in having more frequent meetings with FEDARENE representatives, and several concrete next steps have already been planned, including:

a follow-up meeting on how to reach out companies;
contribute to the database of good practice and campaigns to save energy supported by the Parliament;
develop a list of good practices of campaigns on how to communicate about energy savings and possibly identify “dos and don’ts” which could be relevant for EU level campaigns.