GASNATURALLY WELCOMES GREEN DEAL INITIATIVES IN THE EU RECOVERY PLAN

GasNaturally welcomes the EU’s recovery plan and the focus on EU Green Deal initiatives, particularly the renovation wave, renewable and decarbonised gases as well as clean and sustainable mobility and the circular economy. GasNaturally calls on Member States and the European Parliament to join forces in supporting initiatives aimed at financing economy-boosting recovery instruments that can deliver a net-zero industry while retaining European leadership and jobs in key energy sectors.

Marco Alverà, President of GasNaturally, commented: “We commend the European Commission’s efforts to stimulate economic recovery on climate technology sectors where Europe is leading. Thanks to hydrogen, next generation of gas boilers, biogas and processes such as CC(U)S, Europe can benefit from stimulating economic recovery and jobs, while enabling the energy transition”.

Gaseous solutions (natural gas, LPG, renewable and decarbonised gases) are among the most promising solutions to achieve the faster and deeper renovation of the EU’s building stock on and off the grid, ramping up the energy efficiency and energy performance of existing buildings in a cost-efficient way while decreasing the GHG and air pollutant emissions stemming from the sector.

An institutionalised coordination between electricity and gas sectors should be further improved by strengthening the network planning activities to ensure smooth and coordinated functioning of the hybrid energy system, and improving the interdependency of the power and gas sectors.

Clean hydrogen produced from natural gas with CCS and using pyrolysis, will provide the basis for accelerating the development of a hydrogen economy which, together with an EU-manufactured electrolysers producing hydrogen, could provide up to 5.4 million jobs by 20501 and retain existing jobs in energy-intensive industries.

The EU has a huge potential for local production of biomethane, up to 1200 TWh. Such a production not only is a great example of the circular economy, but also generates sustainable growth.

Gas mobility, especially biomethane-fueled vehicles, along with bioLPG represent a quick and readily available way to complement efforts aimed at decarbonising the transport and logistics sector. Funding opportunities to boost demand for cleaner road and maritime transport, including stimulus for decarbonising the public transport fleets need to be introduced.