On Tuesday 25 October 2022, Luxembourg's Minister for Energy, Claude Turmes, participated in the meeting of the Council of European Union (EU) Energy Ministers in Luxembourg.
The discussions focused on the European Commission's new emergency regulation to deal with high energy prices. Energy Minister Claude Turmes welcomed the establishment of a joint gas purchasing platform: "A joint purchasing platform enables better coordination of gas purchases; we must now move forward to make this system operational as quickly as possible and aggregate a significant volume of demand. Luxembourg is ready to play its full part in this mechanism".
The energy ministers also discussed the rules relating to the hydrogen market within the framework of the "Gas Package", presented by the Commission in December 2021. For Minister Turmes, "the European Union must ramp up hydrogen, which is a useful energy vector for the decarbonisation of sectors for which electrification is difficult to set up, such as part of heavy industry or even air and maritime transport". He continued: "Luxembourg, along with other Member States such as Germany, Austria, Spain, Denmark and Portugal, consider that only renewable hydrogen is sustainable and should benefit from public support".
Minister Turmes also spoke out against the "blending" of hydrogen with natural gas: hydrogen is a product with high added value and industrial consumers want to have access to a pure product that is not mixed with natural gas. He added that blending has negative effects on the climate, as it perpetuates a fossil fuel economy. Luxembourg's Energy Minister stressed the need to develop a network dedicated to hydrogen.
