Von der Leyen, ready to cap the price of gas to produce electricity. Satellites against pipeline sabotage

Von der Leyen, ready to cap the price of gas to produce electricity.  Satellites against pipeline sabotage

Europe has reduced its gas consumption, filled its storage to 90% well above last year's levels, and started cutting the cordon with Russia. But the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyenindicates that many more efforts are needed, at a delicate moment due to the splits between Member States on the issues of the gas price cap and the financing of joint initiatives to tackle rising energy prices andinflation generally.

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A ceiling on the price of gas for electricity

"High gas prices drive up electricity prices. We need to limit this inflationary impact of gas on electricity everywhere in Europe. For this reason, we are ready to discuss a ceiling on the price of gas used to generate electricity. This ceiling would be also a first step towards a structural reform of the electricity market ", said von der Leyen speaking at the plenary of the European Parliament.

"We must also consider gas prices beyond the electricity market. Such a ceiling on gas prices must be properly designed to ensure security of supply. And it is a temporary solution to cope with the fact. that Ttf, our main benchmark for prices, is no longer representative of our market, which today includes more LNG ", he added. The Italian plan, announced by the Minister Cingolani in recent days. A plan that the MITE is setting up looking for a maximum range of variation for the price of gas within the European Union, making a weighted average between the indices of the main world hydrocarbon exchanges: it should therefore take into account not only the stock market listing of Amsterdam Ttf, until now a reference for the Union, but very volatile, but also of that of larger and more stable markets: the Jkm of the Far Eastused by Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan, theHenry Hub from the United Statesand also the London oil exchange Brentthat of the North Sea.

Strengthen joint purchases

Still on the subject of gas, the president of the European executive indicated: "We must strengthen joint gas purchases, it is in our common interest. Next year we will have to refill our storage and we must avoid the scenario in which Member States compete with each other for gas, raising prices for Europe. "For the moment, important results have been achieved on supplies. and on consumption "We have reduced our gas consumption by around 10% - pointed out von der Leyen - Russian pipeline gas supplies fell from 40% to 7.5% today. We compensated for this reduction with the increase in imports of LNG and gas pipelines, mainly from our reliable suppliers such as the United States and Norway. "And again, he told the Strasbourg courtroom in the debate on Ukraine." Gas storage. in the EU it is now at 90%. This is 15% more than on the same day last year. "

Von der Leyen also indicated five points to protect the EU energy infrastructure. First point, he explained, "we must be more prepared", and in this sense "we have approved new legislation that will strengthen the resilience of critical EU entities". Second, "we need to stress test our infrastructure" in order to "identify its weaknesses and prepare our reaction to sudden outages". The third point is "to increase our response capacity through our Union civil protection mechanism already in place". "Fourthly, we will make the best use of our satellite surveillance capability to detect potential threats," she went on to refer to the sabotage threat as seen on Nord Stream's pipes. Finally, "we will strengthen cooperation with NATO and key partners such as the United States on these critical issues".

Mutual funds to strengthen RePowerEu

A passage of his speech also went to the question of acquiring new mutual funds to tackle inflation. Yesterday there was a split on the proposal launched by commissioners Gentiloni (Italy) and Breton (France) to replicate a tool like Sure (the European unemployment insurance adopted during the Covid crisis) for the energy emergency. Proposal that immediately found the opposition of Germany, Holland or Austria. On this, von der Leyen opened: "I think we should further strengthen RePowerEU with additional funding, joint funding. In this way all European states can accelerate the necessary investments".


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