During the Coalition for Energy Savings’ Energy Savings summit, Miguel Arias Cañete, Commissioner for Climate Change and Energy, underlined the importance of maintain the attention on the energy policy. «We are pushing to maintain the Commission’s level of ambition on energy efficiency policy – he said – including our 30% mandatory energy efficiency target. I hope that that level of ambition stays following our institutional discussions.»
Asked how he would judge whether the framework for energy efficiency in Europe was satisfactory he stressed the difficulty of keeping the level of ambition and coherence of the whole package on energy but remained upbeat that progress as outlined by the EU executive could be achieved.
The event was impressively attended by participants from across the European stakeholder and policy maker spectrum following the topic of energy efficiency. The theme this year was “Europe’s people at the heart of the energy transition”.
With consumers in mind, emphasis was also made during the summit on having a more just energy system and its positive story. A 1% extra amount of energy savings lead to a 4% cut in gas imports, roughly 29 euro off the average household energy bill, 335,000 new jobs and a 0.7% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions stressed Coalition for Energy Savings head Stefan Scheuer.
