Verbatim report of proceedings

Tuesday, 18 April 2023 - Strasbourg

Energy storage (debate)

  Vlad-Marius Botoş (Renew). – Madam President, Madam Commissioner, dear colleagues, when we want to change the patterns, we need to be fully open to innovative ideas to encourage and support them. The European energy system proved to be vulnerable, even though you have done great job, Commissioner, last winter. We are vulnerable to the fluctuation of the oil and gas market and not only to those.

The sector has seen a lot of innovation in the past years, but it is not enough. We need innovation in the production of energy, but also in developing new and large storage capacities for the energy. We need massive investments and support, not only for the big companies but also for new actors. We need to open the system to make it possible to integrate brand new ideas and innovation in both production and storage to pass from a closed, very controlled market to welcoming new small micro-production and storage capacities.

The European funds in this sector must be more flexible and way less bureaucratic, and we need to go over the national approach into a real European energy market. If we want green energy for everyone at affordable prices, we must dare to make big changes now.