The European Commission’s Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) has been successful in promoting investment in new energy technologies and fostering the emergence of new markets. However, the SET-Plan was focused on 2020, and now it is time to shift up a gear and look further ahead, European Commissioner for Energy Günther Oettinger said at the conference Europe's Energy Future: Efficiency and Competitiveness through Innovation and Smart Integration.
Speaking at the conference, which was held in the European Parliament in Brussels on March 19, the Commissioner said that in order to achieve this, the Commission was working on a new Integrated Technology Roadmap, which would bring innovation and energy policies closer together.
The Commissioner stressed that the European Union’s 2030 energy package was full of ambition, including: reducing emissions, increasing the use of renewable energy while keeping energy affordable, becoming more efficient, integrating and renewing the European energy network, smartening energy use in Europe and engaging in energy and climate diplomacy.
However, he said that Europe needs to innovate in order to remain on course to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80%1 by 2050, and to replace old energy infrastructure with modern, low-carbon, flexible networks. “Driving innovation and driving a low-carbon future are two sides of the same coin,” he said.
Outlining how this might be achieved, he said that one approach was the SET-Plan approach of planning ad hoc changes for individual sectors or technologies. “The SET-Plan has helped make better use of the funding we have. Horizon 2020 moves further in this direction based on the Energy Technology and Innovation Communication of last year May. For the first time, an EU Research and Technology Development (RTD) Programme spans the whole development process, from research to the final market,” the Commissioner said, adding that the challenge now was to find and exploit the synergies between Horizon 2020 and other sources of funding for energy.
The Commissioner underlined the importance of not favouring one sector, or one group, over another. “It is about getting all sectors together, all interested parties to cooperate. So that the funds we have are used with the greatest impact for Europe,” he said.
1 From 1990 levels.