Memo

Memo to the commissioner responsible for energy

Publishing date
04 September 2024
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The great momentum in Europe’s energy transition must continue during your mandate. Electrification is the primary tool for reaching climate targets. Fortunately, you take office against a backdrop of huge global innovation and cost reduction in clean technologies. Your first challenge will be to ensure security of energy supply as electrification raises questions about infrastructure and cyber-security risks. You will also need to deploy efficient frameworks, including a European fund, to ensure the necessary green investments are made, particularly in European electricity grids.

You should work with national capitals to eliminate remaining energy imports from Russia. You should lead negotiations on the 2040 climate targets, which would see EU emissions falling by 90 percent compared to 1990. Finally, you should propose a European Energy Agency to deliver the better data policymakers and investors need to better understand Europe’s energy transition.

Key actions:

  • Resolve electrification infrastructure issues

  • Promote investment, especially in grids

  • Exit the energy trade with Russia

Read the full memo by clicking the download button at the top of this page.

About the authors

  • Simone Tagliapietra

    Simone Tagliapietra is a Senior fellow at Bruegel. He is also a Professor of EU Energy and Climate Policy at The Johns Hopkins University - School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Europe.

    His research focuses on the EU climate and energy policy and on the political economy of global decarbonisation. With a record of numerous policy and scientific publications, also in leading journals such as Nature and Science, he is the author of Global Energy Fundamentals (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and co-author of The Macroeconomics of Decarbonisation (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

    His columns and policy work are widely published and cited in leading international media such as the BBC, CNN, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Corriere della Sera, Le Monde, El Pais, and several others.

    Simone also is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Clean Air Task Force (CATF). He holds a PhD in Institutions and Policies from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Born in the Dolomites in 1988, he speaks Italian, English and French.

  • Georg Zachmann

    Georg Zachmann is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, where he has worked since 2009 on energy and climate policy. His work focuses on regional and distributional impacts of decarbonisation, the analysis and design of carbon, gas and electricity markets, and EU energy and climate policies. Previously, he worked at the German Ministry of Finance, the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin, the energy think tank LARSEN in Paris, and the policy consultancy Berlin Economics.

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