Eyes on the Horizon: Adrian Joyce’s speech at EUFORES

Our Secretary General Adrian Joyce spoke at the EUFORES Inter-Parliamentary Meeting in the Bundestag in Berlin in October 2022. His speech, ‘Eyes on the Horizon – What not to forget during an energy crisis’, put the spotlight on the power of energy efficiency to bring permanent benefits to European society.

We are at a crossroads in the energy transition, required to make a clear choice about where to turn next, because we have seen what happens when we keep going along familiar roads – we end up in a major crisis. It is precisely at this moment that we should raise our eyes and look to the horizon.

EU governments had already allocated more than €350 billion to schemes designed to cushion the financial impact of the energy crisis. These short-term measures were necessary, but at times of crisis, the sole policy response cannot be about enduring short-term pain: governments must look ahead to avoid recurrences of the same crises and invest in measures which pay off in the long term.

The action we recommended is to ambitiously and rapidly roll out massive, high quality renovation programmes that address the worst performing and non-residential buildings first. Unlike the money used today for relief measures, the money used for energy renovation brings benefits over 20 or 30 years, permanently reducing the number of energy units that a consumer or building owner must buy.

There is no better way to increase energy security than to ensure that we don’t need to buy energy in the first place!