Delegations' heads of the Energy session during the informal meeting with the EU's ministers for telecommunications, transport, energy (TTE) at the Scandinavian XPO in Marsta outside Stockholm, Sweden, on February 28, 2023. (Photo by Fredrik Sandberg / TT News Agency / AFP)
EU countries agreed a deal on Friday with the European Parliament to cut projected energy consumption by 2030, part of the a green push made more urgent by Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The agreement is an important strand of the EU’s ambitious climate goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by the end of the decade.
But it also comes as the bloc has stepped up efforts to save energy since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion sent prices skyrocketing last year.
This video is no longer available.
The deal obliges the EU to reduce energy use by 2030 by 11.7 percent in relation to an earlier projection of expected levels.
It sets targets for each of the bloc’s 27 countries to limit consumption by around 1.5 percent annually from 2024 to 2030.
“For the first time ever, we have a target for energy consumption that member states are obliged to live up to,” said Danish MEP Niels Fuglsang, the parliament’s pointman on the issue.
“Today was a great victory. An agreement not only good for our climate, but bad for Putin.”
While Friday’s agreement was part of the EU’s long-standing push for net-zero, the bloc has already been slashing its gas use due to the fallout of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Faced with spiralling energy bills last year, the bloc agreed in July to cut gas usage between August 2022 and March 2023 by 15 percent compared to the average of the previous five years.
The bloc’s executive said Thursday that it will tell member states to continue to reduce consumption next winter.
This video is no longer available.
Download our app and read this and other great stories on the move. Available for Android and iOS.