Informal meeting for EU energy ministers in Budapest

Global competition has entered a critical phase and Europe will lag behind unless it does everything possible to enhance its competitiveness, Hungary’s energy affairs minister said ahead of an informal meeting of EU energy ministers in Budapest on Tuesday.

At the meeting, proposals will be discussed from the point of view of boosting the bloc’s competitiveness, a major topic of Hungary’s current rotating EU presidency, Csaba Lantos told journalists.

After the energy crisis two years ago global energy prices have broadly settled back to normal levels, Lantos said, adding however that electricity prices in Europe were twice as high as in China and three to four times higher than in the United States.

The meeting’s agenda also includes preparing a summary of the energy and climate plans submitted by the individual member states by the June 30 deadline, the minister said. The EU’s target date to reach full carbon neutrality is 2050, Lantos noted, adding that to achieve that goal, the release of greenhouse gases would have to be reduced by 55 percent by 2030 from the level of 1990. The meeting will review progress made so far on this undertaking, he added.

Photo: Hungarian Energy Ministry/FB

Lots of money should be spent on upgrading the electricity grid

A new topic to be discussed is the use of geothermal energy, Lantos said. He highlighted significant progress made in the recent past in the area of renewable resources, which in Europe included solar and wind energy. “Whereas these two depend on the weather, geothermal energy is available any time and has a great potential,” Lantos said, highlighting Hungary’s “particularly great conditions” in that respect.

He said representatives of Switzerland, Norway and Iceland are also attending the meeting, which “illustrates well that Europe is united in this aspect as well”.

Photo: Hungarian Energy Ministry/FB

Speaking at a press conference after the meeting, Lantos said on the topic of geothermal energy that EU member states on average tended to make use of less than 1 percent of their geothermal resources.

He said the ministers had continued their discussions on the future of the EU’s electricity grid. He said a total of 67 billion euros should be spent each year on upgrading the electricity grid in the interest of the bloc achieving its global competitiveness and carbon-neutrality goals, adding that financial resources and coordinated EU regulations were also key.

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