Speaking at the Green Transition Forum 4.0: Redefining the CEE Region Global Perspective on Wednesday, Maros Sefcovic, Vice-President of the European Commission (EC) for Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight, said that there is a consensus that Europe needs to be a climate neutral continent by 2050. He noted that "people understand that we need to go in the direction of climate neutrality because we simply must make sure that the planet will be habitable for the generations which would come after us".
Organized by Dir.bg and 3E News, with BTA as its media partner, the three-day forum opened at the Sofia Event Centre on earlier on Wednesday.
Sefcovic said that people in Europe realize that the continent is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world and that the number of devastating disasters is multiplying by the year. He added that preventive measures are being taken, but this is not enough, stressing that natural disasters cause loss of life and serious property damage every year. The EC Vice-President was adamant that the direct effect climate change has on households and the industry is evident. He identified droughts and heat waves as major challenges that make crop growth impossible.
Sefcovic noted that efforts should be focused on communicating with the public about the implementation of the Green Deal, which he described as the most comprehensive legal framework in the world. The EC Vice-President said that their goals by 2050 are "extremely ambitious", noting that the feasibility of their implementation needs to be considered. According to Sefcovic, one of the concerns is the slow approval procedures for building a solar power plant or a wind turbine, for instance, which, in his words, take between six and seven years on average. “This is simply too slow for the technology change we need to advance,” he said.
"Nobody disputes that the Green Pact is a formidable legislative framework, but we hear from the industries is that we also have to make sure that we would combine it with the proper funding and the processes which would make it a more attractive business case," Sefcovic noted. He said that it is important to engage business not only because it is relevant from an environmental point of view but also because it generates revenue. He said that banks are being used to leverage public funding and help in addressing challenges in sectors where technological breakthroughs such as small modular reactors are aimed at being achieved. Sefcovic added that he is a strong advocate for the creation of a "transatlantic clean tech marketplace".
"I am convinced that by now we know that the future competitiveness of the European economy will not be determined by excelling in the old technologies," he said. Sefcovic noted that it is imperative that Europe excel in battery production, AI, energy storage, and building better and smarter grids to transmit more electricity because "by 2050 we would need to transmit 3.5 times more electricity than today".
/NZ/
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