Energy Consumption

What is the EU doing?

Even though some countries have improved their energy intensity, demand for energy is growing across many other countries in the world. If this increased demand is not offset by improvements in energy efficiency elsewhere, then our global energy consumption will continue to grow year-on-year. Growing energy consumption makes the challenge of transitioning our energy systems away from fossil fuels towards low-carbon sources of energy more difficult: new low-carbon energy has to meet this additional demand and try to displace existing fossil fuels in the energy mix.

Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat to Europe and the world. In this regard, the EU is increasing its climate ambition and aims at becoming the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. Therefore, the European Green Deal aims at transforming the EU into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy, ensuring:

• no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050
• economic growth decoupled from resource use
• no person and no place left behind

Furthermore, to meet the 2030 climate target, energy efficiency needs to be prioritised. To step up its efforts, the Commission put forward in July 2021 a proposal for a recast directive on energy efficiency. The recast proposal raises the level of ambition of the EU energy efficiency target and makes it binding by requiring EU countries to collectively ensure an additional reduction of energy consumption of 9% by 2030 compared to the 2020 reference scenario projections.

Key figures

Source: LINK