Europe risks being seen as ‘weak’ in new energy balance of power says Eurelectric’s Ruby
‘In the new balance of power, home grown electricity is industrial power and political power’ he tells Brussels summit
The secretary-general of Eurelectric, Kristian Ruby, today painted a stark picture of the challenge Europe faces to be seen as a major player on the global energy economic stage.
He said that on a world map, Europe could be considered as a collection of ‘small countries’, and he warned that “we are becoming the small countries in a geopolitical sense”.
“War is back in Europe, coal plants are back in operation. In Asia, the emerging economies have emerged and the US is reshaping its industries. A new balance of power is emerging and we need to avoid that ‘small’ means ‘weak’.
Delivering the opening speech of the Eurelectric Power Summit in Brussels, Ruby said the “dark clouds of climate change are gathering and protectionism is on the rise”, which he said was resulting in “the economic mantra changing from ‘just in time’ to ‘just in case’.”
And he said the energy transition was seeing Europe shift from “a fuel-intensive economy to a raw materials economy”.
He said that Europe had made great strides in the energy transition in the first half of this century, yet a variety of events in recent years, including the Covid pandemic and Brexit, had resulted in it taking its eye off the ball in terms of energy security.
And now countries were left asking: “How did we get so dependent on Russian gas?”
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But now he said “Europe has its eyes open” and the question it must answer is: “How do we get back to the future without repeating the mistakes of the past?”
“How do we scale solutions to build a net zero Europe,” posed Ruby. “In the new balance of power, home grown electricity is industrial power and it is political power.”
And he stressed that being the ‘small countries’ has advantages that must be maximized. “The strength of the small countries flows from our unity, co-operation and commitment to freedom and planetary stewardship.”
At this morning’s opening of the event, Eurelectric unveiled its report Decarbonisation Speedways, which identifies three decarbonisation scenarios, or ‘speedways’, towards net zero by 2050 based on current policies – one on Fit for 55, another on REPowerEu and the third named ‘Radical action’ as an extension of the latter to deliver net zero by 2040.
