Earlier today, the European Parliament adopted the report revising the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), one of the key legislative files of the “Fit for 55” package. Members of the European Parliament (overwhelmingly) supported the agreement found in the ITRE committee earlier on 13 July and rejected all plenary amendments that would have undermined the agreement.

The European Parliament decided to strengthen most of the European Commission’s proposal to revise the Directive. Most importantly, it sets a 2030 binding energy efficiency target of at least 40% in final energy consumption and 42.5% in primary energy consumption, based on the 2007 Reference Scenario. 1 While this is a much higher target than the one proposed in the Commission’s REPowerEU plan, it is still lower than today’s technical and economic potential for energy savings, especially considering today’s energy price crisis. 

“We welcome the work done by the Parliament to improve the proposal of the Commission; these improvements open the way to a more ambitious mandate in view of the difficult negotiations with the Council, whose common position is well below what is needed for an effective revision of the EED,” said Monica Frassoni, President of EU-ASE. “We are still missing a real sense of urgency and of the exceptional actions and resources needed to implement the Energy Efficiency First principle. This is proven by the fact that energy efficiency was barely mentioned from President Von Der Leyen’s address to the Parliament in her SOTEU speech.”

Therefore, we call on the EU institutions to seize this historic opportunity and to swiftly enter interinstitutional negotiations to reach a final agreement that puts energy efficiency first. To address the climate and energy crisis, the EU can count on energy efficiency measures that are made in Europe, easy to implement and can cost-effectively phase out the EU’s need for Russian fossil fuels.

Check our catalogue with all measures here.

Read the full press release here.

Media contact:
Antoan Montignier
+32 499 84 97 28
antoan.montignier@euase.eu

About us
The European Alliance to Save Energy (EU-ASE) is a cross-sectoral, business-led organisation that ensures that the voice of energy efficiency is heard across Europe. EU-ASE members have operations across the 27 Member States of the European Union, employ over 340.000 people in Europe and have an aggregated annual turnover of €115 billion.