Czech Business Today

The current energy situation is alarming, and the EU is responding by taking a range of measures to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and its dependence on gas supplies from Russia. As the Czech Republic is very concerned about this topic, CEBRE in cooperation with the European Commission organized a debate “REPowerEU: the cure for dependence on Russian energy?”.

The debate clarified the positions of the various stakeholders, which included representatives of the Commission, the European Parliament, the Council, and Czech entities such as the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the business community. The Green Deal addresses the “Fit for 55” package, where energy plays a key role. The package, which was supposed to focus on the energy situation in general, has been completely disrupted by the Russian military aggression against Ukraine, and its economics situation will have a huge impact on Fit for 55. Just to give you an idea, the price of gas has risen 4.5 times from last year, an increase of 350% since the beginning of last year. Therefore, there is now a strong focus on reducing imports and dependence on fossil fuels, primarily from Russia, which is the largest gas supplier to the EU.

The plan that the EU is preparing intends to focus on 6 priority areas, where the European Commission repre­sentative mentioned, for example, the completion of the update of Member States’ contingency plans and the preparation for the fact that the situation could change rapidly from one day to the next and gas from Russia could be cut off completely and increasing diversifica­tion of supply by actively engaging in the EU Energy Platform and using it to aggregate demand needs and enhanced monitoring and coordination through the Gas Coordination Group. Furthermore, a demand reduction plan should be presented, which should, among other things, set criteria for prioritizing certain industries and propose possible restrictions on gas prices at the EU level. According to the European Parliament representa­tive Mr. Niedermayer: ‘Europe needs to generate more electricity independently, sustainably, and as quickly as possible. Furthermore, it is also necessary to reduce the demand for energy so that we do not have to import energy that is not needed to be consumed. We need to act very quickly and must proceed in solidarity so that we will not have, on the one side, countries that will not have to restrict their economy in any way and, on the other side, countries in which gas will only reach protected customers.” The issue of energy security is not a problem for all EU countries, but unfortunately, the Czech Republic is one of the countries that will be rapidly affected. Countries that do not need to be so concerned are, for example, the Scandinavian countries, which have a high proportion of hydroelectric power plants and renewable sources. Photovoltaic energy could also help, for example, Poland has increased the amount of photovoltaic and wind power, and the same could be possible within the Czech Republic. Finally, mention was made of the national energy plan, which says that by 2030 we should increase the share of renewable sources in electricity production to 20% of the total amount in the Czech Republic.