Ribera puts gas in his sights

The Spanish Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, today supported that European funds stop financing infrastructures associated with fossil fuels such as gas. “There is a very important bloc of countries that we insist, in line with the G7, with the International Energy Agency and with our Green Deal (…), that it is important that there is coherence and not to finance infrastructures associated with fossil fuels,” Ribera said upon his arrival at a council of European energy ministers in Luxembourg in statements collected by Efe.

The also vice president of the Government referred to the block of 11 countries of the 27 member states, including Spain, which ask for the exclusion of gas pipelines and similar from the so-called Projects of Common Interest (PCI, for its acronym in English), which can receive community funds.

“We seek a general agreement on what is the orientation on energy infrastructures that will govern the next period and the decisions of the European Commission,” added Ribera, who added that stopping financing these fossil projects would serve to “not unnecessarily lengthen the transition.”

Gas combined cycles are one of the wildcard technologies of the electrical system along with nuclear and, to a lesser extent, hydraulics, the latter two non-polluting.

The issue will be on the table of European energy ministers in a debate on the so-called TEN-E Regulation in which capitals will seek to give a political orientation to the rules to facilitate the investments in cross-border energy infrastructure. The EU is revising that regulation to adapt it to the future and align it with climate targets for 2030 and 2050.

The European Ministerial Council, the first of the Energy Ministers held in person since the arrival of the pandemic, will also discuss more generally how energy can contribute to achieving the goal of reducing _CO2 emissions by at least 55% by 2030.

Thus, the ministers will also discuss “new objectives and new facilities for the use of renewable energies, for efficiency, for standards in our homes, such as promoting mobility that does not have so many greenhouse gas emissions (…) beyond strictly energy policies because it is incorporated into sectoral policies,” Ribera added.

The Spanish Minister responsible for Energy stressed in her statement that it will also address how to make the transformation of the energy system to make it “viable for the whole of European society”.

“Hence the interest it arouses as accompanying measures of energy policy with measures to reduce or accompany the energy bill of consumers, an equitable distribution of the benefits offered by this transition is part of the most sensitive political debate.”

This is a pre-test advice presentation in mid-July by the European Commission of a comprehensive package of directives and legislative revisions to achieve that desired reduction of 55% of CO emissions₂ that will “guide the debate in the European institutions in the next year and a half,” Ribera added.

Source: Reason