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The meeting brought together environment as well as energy ministers from EU Member States and EFTA countries. The European Commission was represented by the European Commissioner for the Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Mr Karmenu Vella. The meeting was chaired by the Latvian Minister for Environmental Protection and Regional Development, Mr Kaspars Gerhards, and the Latvian Minister for Economic Affairs, Ms Dana Reizniece-Ozola.
In order to reduce energy dependency and to mitigate climate change, the attention of EU Member States had been focused on increasing the use of domestic renewable energy sources. However, there are often implications on biodiversity.
Ministers had exchange of views on two topics: sharing the national experience regarding the planning and implementing of renewable energy and biodiversity policies and on the benefits of technological neutrality principle in both policies. Preserving biodiversity and increasing the resilience of ecosystems should go hand in hand with increasing the competitiveness of the economy and increasing energy security in Europe and mitigating climate change.
Recently European Council agreed on building the Energy Union with a forward-looking climate policy. The core objective of the EU is to provide households and businesses with secure, sustainable, competitive and affordable energy. The EU is currently the largest energy importer in the world and on the other hand it is still the leader in renewable energy. The EU is committed to further increase the use of renewable energy sources. In October 2014 the European Council agreed on the Climate and energy framework 2030, which set up a binding EU level target in renewable energy – at least 27% in EU energy consumption by 2030.
„For today the European Union is on the way to reach agreed target 20 % renewable energy share in consumed energy by 2020. I am very proud that Latvia had reached 37,1 % and together with Sweden, Finland, Austria and Denmark we are the five Member States with bigger renewable share in the gross final energy consumption,” stressed Ms Dana Reizniece-Ozola, the Latvian Minister for Economic Affairs.
During the discussions the ministers agreed, that it is important to focus on opportunities and challenges related to measures and their impacts in order to identify the risks that can arise between renewable energy and nature conservation and address them adequately, so that win-win solutions can be found.
“The EU has agreed on the goal to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2020. As there is a slow progress, more needs to be done to reach this goal. There are number of pressures on biodiversity and the use of renewable energy sources is one of them. Therefore we have to look for win-win solutions that would allow biodiversity conservation while increasing the use of renewable energy sources,” emphasised Mr Kaspars Gerhards, the Latvian Minister for Environmental Protection and Regional Development.
As one of preferred courses of action identified also in the Energy Union strategy dimension for Research, Innovation and Competitiveness is the development of the next generation of renewable energy technologies, including environment-friendly production and use of biomass and biofuels, together with energy storage. It foresees a new Renewable Energy Package which will include a new policy for sustainable biomass and biofuels as well as legislation to ensure that the 2030 EU target is met cost-effectively.
On the basis of today’s discussion the Presidency will prepare summary that will be of use for future work when tailoring the EU energy and climate and nature and biodiversity policy tools.
Press conference following the Informal Meeting of Environment and Energy Ministers
