I am extremely honoured to welcome you here, as co-host of this important conference.

Let me kick off by sharing a few tangible examples of what we will be talking about today.

I bet that the first thing many of you did this morning was switch on the lights: if it was an LED bulb that you switched on, it used 90% less energy than a traditional bulb.

Then Im sure most of you went to take a shower. If water is boiled with a heat pump or a solar water heater rather than standard boiler – in Europe, that will typically save a family almost 900 euro per year.

These are small examples, maar ze tonen een heel belangrijke les: energiebesparing heeft een enorm potentieel voor besparingen.

Now I want to start by outlining the main challenges we face, in Europe and in most countries on this planet, when it comes to energy policy.

The first challenge is toegankelijkheid en betaalbaarheid

We have hundreds of millions of people on this planet who do not have access to clean energy.

We have companies struggling, to compete and to grow, because their energy bills are too high.

At the same time, we are facing a tremendous klimaatcrisis – that unfortunately is just getting worse and worse.

If that wasnt a tall order in itself, for many countries, energy policy is also about veiligheid.

Lets start by looking at the first challenge – how do we make sure that we fight energy poverty?

Clearly, energiebesparing moet centraal staan in onze inspanningen.

You might think that energy poverty is predominantly something you see in developing countries. And yes, it is a huge problem that we have hundreds of millions of people around the planet who do not have access to energy.

But even in Europa – you might be surprised – 1 in 10 Europeans are at the risk of energy poverty. Last winter, 47 million people were not able to adequately heat their homes.

This is something we need to address.

We tend to focus on deployment of more renewables – and for good reason: the IEA has estimated that, from 2021 to 2023, we saved almost 100 billion on our energy bills in Europe thanks to renewables.

But, actually, the potential for most households and companies will be even bigger if we deploy just known energiebesparende technologieën.

It demands investments, yes. But these investments pay back, and they pack back fast.

For industry, every time one euro is spent on energiebesparing, it translates to four euro in savings on average, in a few years.

For households, its even more. For households on average, one euro spent in energiebesparing translates to twelve euro in savings. So the potential is huge.

Now, klimaatverandering. As I said earlier, this is probably the biggest challenge that we face.

Sure, theres a war on our continent. But Im confident that there will be peace.

Sure, we have strained relations across the Atlantic and trade wars are going on. But that will stabilise, we will find solutions.

Unfortunately, climate change will continue to be the biggest challenge for all of us in this room, for the rest of our lives.

And its not something that might happen in the future. Its already year. And it already has catastrophic consequences. 

People are dying.

So, its a moral imperative for us to address that challenge.

Obviously, climate change hits the hardest on most vulnerable parts of our planet

But even in Europa we see the consequences. Lives are being lost. We are the continent where temperatures are increasing the fastest. So we need to do more.

Energy efficiency measures in Europe alone can deliver 40% of the reduction we are required to deliver.

Improving energy efficiency in buildings alone can make them up to 60% less carbon-intensive. Buildings account for 40% of our energy use – the potential is huge.

Now, veiligheid.

I know that this will differ depending on where you are from the world. We have people from the whole planet here in the room.

But I would be remiss if I didnt spend a few minutes on the terrible war in Oekraïne.

As the EU, we do whatever we can to help the people of Oekraïne and the government of Oekraïne. Unfortunately the energy sector is being hit and has been targeted by Russian attacks. And we spend a lot of resources helping as best as we can.

But the war also affects Europa.

I used to be Minister for Climate and Energy in Denmark and I also served in February 2022 when the full scale invasion began. And I can tell you that, in the first days and weeks, we spent all of our time making emergency plans. Deciding which companies we would have to force to close down. And by force, I mean if they would not do it, we would send people in uniform to close factories. This is almost incomprehensible. But we would have done it. Why? Because, had worse come to worst, had Putin turned off the gas taps from one day to the next, then we would have had to keep our hospitals running and to make sure that our people would not freeze.

And Denmark wasnt even the most exposed country in Europe. Had Russia closed the gas supply – that time we got 45% of our gas in Europe from Russia, then we would have been in the middle of a recession, and a terrible crisis for millions and millions of people.

This was a very important lesson. Because it showed us that being dependent on energy from one source is not a very nice and sustainable place to be. Especially if that source is your enemy.

Very quickly, we transitioned our strategy. It wasnt about emergency plans, it was about getting out of this dependency.

Since then, weve reduced our energy imports. We used to get 51% of our coal from Russia, now we get zero. We used to get 27% of our oil, now we get 3. We used to get 45% of our gas, now we get 13.

But we will not stop here. We sent a very clear signal to Russia: no more. No more will we let you weaponise your energy against us. No more will we let you blackmail our countries. No more will we help indirectly fill the war chest of the kremlin.

And the reason we have been able to do this is yes, weve been able to diversify our supplies and also because weve been able to reduce our use of gas. By energiebesparende maatregelen. By becoming more independent.

And now, when we take the final steps, the last 13%. Thats around 36 bcm a year, some say: “how can we do that without the prices increasing?”. And part of the reason is that we reduce our use of gas by 15bcm per year. We are going fast in the right direction, because of energiebesparing.

So: om klimaatverandering te bestrijden, om onze mensen betaalbare schone energie te bieden, voor onze eigen veiligheid, moet energiebesparing centraal staan in alles wat we doen. And we have a lot of progress in Europe and globally.

At the same time, its going too slow. We need to do more and we need to do it faster. And that is what we will be going to discuss, for the next hours, the rest of the day, and tomorrow. Im so pleased to be here!

…

I want to say a few words about what is my priority for the mandate that Ive been given by President Von Der Leyen for the next five years. 

Ive set out 10 action areas regarding energiebesparing. They include:

• further mobilisation of public and private financing investments,
• strengthening integration of energiebesparende oplossingen into energy systems,
• supporting cooperation among stakeholders – for instance, financial institutions and energiebesparende oplossing providers;
• enhancing international cooperation on energiebesparing –for instance at a conference like this, but also with more concrete bilateral collaboration and multilateral collaboration.

Were beginning right away. Weve already made some efforts - Im sure youve noticed.

We are focusing on five big areas of action, which include:

• a guarantee scheme for energiebesparende oplossingen, which we are preparing together with the European Investment Bank. I want to double the current level of energiebesparende services by providing easier access to financing, in particular for small and medium sized enterprises.
• Im also developing tripartite contracts for energiebesparende oplossingen to scale up projects and reduce barriers for fast changes on the ground;
• and finally I will propose a data center energiebesparende pakket since data centers are on the rise, and now account for close to 3% of the EUs electricity demand.

In the Commission, we are also very much focused to advancing on our global pledge. We are mobilising 300 billion EURO from our Global Gateway initiative towards sustainable infrastructure investments, including energiebesparing.

And finally, we will provide leadership and enable cooperation, through the Global Energy Transition Forum launched by President Von Der Leyen.