Claude Turmes, Luxembourg's Minister for Energy;
Credit: SIP / Yves Kortum
On Monday 2 May 2022, Luxembourg's Minister for Energy, Claude Turmes, attended the Council of Ministers of Energy of the European Union (EU) in Brussels, Belgium.
During this extraordinary meeting, EU energy ministers discussed the energy situation in the EU in the context of the war in Ukraine.
The negotiations focused in particular on the strategy to be adopted following the latest developments and in particular the decisions recently taken by Gazprom to completely suspend the supply of gas under its contracts with certain EU Member States.
In this context, Minister Turmes recalled the solidarity with Poland and Bulgaria following the interruptions of gas deliveries. "Eliminating Europe's dependence on Russian fossil fuels goes hand in hand with the fight against climate change", he recalled. "We must decide on an emergency energy savings plan. energy to deal with a possible disruption of supply".
Within the framework of the European action plan for the EU's energy sovereignty, REPowerEU, the energy ministers emphasised that it was necessary to continue to accelerate the deployment of renewable energies, which also includes the industrial aspect with the repatriation in Europe of the value chains on transition technologies (photovoltaic panels, electrolysers, heat pumps, etc.).
Luxembourg's Minister for Energy recalled that the construction of new gas infrastructures is not part of these solutions: "Like nuclear energy, new gas infrastructures would only be available too late and too expensive to play a in the output of Russian fossil fuels", he stated.
In addition to the massive development of renewable energies, aid for energy efficiency is part of the solutions to eliminate dependence on Russian fossil fuels.
