The European Union’s (EU) European Commission released its first State of the Energy Union Report on Wednesday, indicating early progress since the commission adopted the Energy Union Framework Strategy earlier this year.
The Energy Union Framework Strategy aims to help facilitate the transition of global energy generation from current fossil-fuel methods to low-carbon and carbon-free methods on a global scale. The strategy also includes reports on policy and action areas on national, regional and Europe-wide levels.
“The Energy Union is starting to take shape,” Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete, said. “A lot of progress has been made in these few months, but we should now move to full-scale delivery of all actions needed. This will be my focus in 2016: presenting legislation to make our electricity market work better, to further increase the share of renewables, to bring down our energy consumption and to ensure the security of our gas supply.”
The commission said the transition would need to involve citizens for it to be fair and successful. Geopolitical events have kept energy discussions front and center over the course of this year, including the international nuclear agreement with Iran and developments in Russia related to increasing natural gas infrastructure capabilities.
The commission’s job is to represent and uphold the interests of the EU as a whole.
