REPowerEU: reinventing Europe’s energy architecture

The European Commission last week presented its €300 billion REPowerEU plan to reduce the EU's reliance on Russian fossil fuels.

The REPowerEU plan revolves around three key pillars:

(i) saving more energy;

(ii) producing more renewable energy in the EU; and

(iii) diversifying the EU's energy supply.

The proposals include increasing the EU’s 2030 headline targets for energy efficiency from 9% to 13% and for renewables from 40% to 45%. The plan, which the Commission says is in line with the European Green Deal and the EU’s net zero ambitions, is expected to provide a significant boost to solar, wind and hydrogen. That said, it contains a lot of soft law and will spur interesting discussions on funding, as well as require a high degree of coordination and alignment between Member States implementing the various policies and recommendations.

In the words of Frans Timmermans, the Commission’s Executive Vice-President responsible for the European Green Deal: “Renewables give us the freedom to choose an energy source that is clean, cheap, reliable, and ours ... REPowerEU is our plan to break our dependency on Russian gas, and to find freedom in our energy choices. We can do it, and we can do it fast…In March, we showed it could be done. The European Council in Versailles decided it should be done. Today, we show how it will be done.”

For more information, read our blog post: REPowerEU: reinventing Europe's energy architecture.