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R3: Green and social solutions to the energy crisis

The following table describes the status, the proposer and other metadata of this motion.
Metadata of the motion
Party:Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament

Draft text

Russia’s unjustified war against Ukraine has led to dramatic consequences,
firstly for the people of Ukraine and for the entire world. Within EU Member
States, we have witnessed a rise of social inequality, energy poverty, and
inflation, leading to significant impacts, e.g. on employment and food prices.
In addition, climate change is exacerbating this situation and aggravating
inequalities by hitting the poorest the hardest.

Almost one in four Europeans are already at risk of poverty and social exclusion
spiralling energy prices climate change will only make things worse. Women are
disproportionately affected by energy poverty and mobility poverty, in
particular single mothers, who represent 85% of single parent families with
dependent children.

Energy prices for European households notably electricity prices have increased
by up to 167% for people in some European countries with bills predicted to
surge by €2 trillion at their peak, early 2024. Already many households are
unable to make ends meet: this winter, many more will have to choose between
eating and heating.

This also affects society at large as services like hospitals, universities or
schools are impacted by the rise in energy prices. Small companies, are not able
to pass on their rising energy costs to their customers, risking bankruptcy.
Local authorities in charge of the front-line services rendered to European
citizens will have difficulties finding the money, leading to disruption in
public services.

Countries in Europe have different capacities to equitably manage prices and
demand or provide the essential support to those who need it. Financial
solidarity within the EU and between the EU and its neighbours is therefore
essential.

Since inflation is regressive. Unavoidable expenditures such as rent/mortgages,
food, energy, water, clothing, health and transport constitute a much larger
part of the budget of low-income households, compared to wealthier households.
We need to focus first and foremost on the lowest income sor at risk of a
significant drop in income. We should also extend support to SMEs, upon which
many livelihoods depend.

Russia’s war against Ukraine shows the need to eliminate our dependence on
fossil energy imports and fossil fuels in general, in particular from
authoritarian regimes. The short-term EU strategy to focus on diversifying EU
oil and gas imports, without regard for the Human Rights situation in fossil
fuel exporting countries only feeds our addiction to fossil fuels and create new
dependency on third countries, contrary to our climate and energy objectives for
2030 and 2050.

The UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 aims to ensure access to affordable,
reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. To do that, we need to reduce
our energy consumption to a fair and sustainable level, ensure energy
efficiency, boost renewable energies and better share the energy to keep prices
at an acceptable level. Renewable energies are the most cost-effective energy
sources and key to an environmentally sustainable system within the planetary
boundaries. The International Energy Agency and IPCC have both warned that new
fossil fuel infrastructures are incompatible with international climate goals.
In order to become climate neutral by 2050, the EU should phase out fossil fuels
in the energy system by 2035 at the latest already.

The EU is currently revising key “Green Deal” energy but more needs to be done
to achieve climate neutrality before 2050.

This is why we are calling on the European Commission and Member States to:

  • Recognize the right to energy, understood as the universal affordable
    access for citizens to safe and sustainable

Ensure immediate action to address the impact of high energy prices

  • Member States should focus support on those hardest hit by current prices,
    notably households in or at risk of energy poverty and SMEs as well as
    public services, such as social housing, education establishments or
    hospitals which are at risk of decreasing availability for all in need;
  • The European Union should adopt a temporary dynamic price cap on EU gas
    imports to lower the price of imports and upgrade the EU energy platform
    to a joint procurement of energy sources in order to strengthen the EU
    bargaining power;
  • Member States should immediately provide households with a basic amount of
    energy at an affordable price and provide temporary direct income support
    to vulnerable households and transport users, as a transitional measure,
    to absorb the increase in prices;
  • They ought to ban disconnections from energy supply and stop evictions
    from homes, suspend rent indexation schemes and ensure access to
    alternative payment plans for bills, consumer advice and mediation
    services;
  • The European institutions should implement a socially fair EU wide energy
    savings scheme ask most from energy intensive users, in order to ensure
    supply to households as well as public and private providers of essential
    goods and services is prioritised;
  • Member States should limit, and prohibit where appropriate, the use of
    high energy consumption non-essentials such as private jets, short haul
    flights where a train journey alternative exists or heated private
    swimming pools;
  • Member States should tax excess profits of multinational companies that
    have profited from the consequences of the war and market speculation and
    ensure that the collected revenues are distributed to the most vulnerable
    households, especially those in or near energy or mobility poverty; The
    European Commission should propose a permanent mechanism enabling, in a
    crisis, the orderly collection and redistribution of taxes on windfall
    profit tax on large companies across all sectors;
  • EU institutions should adopt a harmonised definition of energy poverty in
    order to improve actions to fight it;

Guarantee the necessary investments in energy savings and renewable energies

  • Member States must invest in energy savings, efficiency and renewables as
    first choice solutions to fight high energy prices and dependencies, as
    renewable energy generation facilities have extremely low operating costs;
    Investment in long-lasting measures should be at least comparable in
    volume to the short-term relief and must be coordinated in order to
    effectively lift people out of energy and mobility poverty;
  • Member States should mobilise additional investments corresponding to at
    least 1% of their GDP per year into energy savings, notably also in the
    renovation of poorly insulated homes and renewable energy to the benefit
    of vulnerable households;
  • Member States have a duty to ensure that those who can contribute more to
    national solidarity pay their fair share of taxes; In addition, Member
    States should ensure that any support measures and investments they make
    respect the principle of ‘do no significant harm’ and safeguard social and
    labour rights; They should therefore reject investments in additional gas
    and oil infrastructure, which are not in line with EU climate targets and
    would create lock in to fossil fuel and dependency; European institutions
    should agree on binding national energy efficiency targets and a higher
    binding EU target of at least 20% by 2030; Similarly, they should support
    a higher binding EU renewable energy target of at least 56 % by 2030;
  • Member States should adopt ambitious and mandatory gas and electricity
    demand reduction targets; and end schemes to install fossil fuel boilers
    in buildings, redirecting such financing instead to support the most
    vulnerable households in switching to renewables; In addition, they should
    put in place binding measures to replace by 2025 the 64% of gas used in
    the industrial sector that is easily replaceable by mature renewable
    technologies;
  • Member States should proactively provide effective information and
    logistical and financial support to ensure the creation of at least one
    renewable energy community per municipality by 2023 so that citizens can
    produce, consume, store and resell their own renewable energy as
    individuals or communities;
  • Where relevant, Member States should phase out nuclear power either by the
    dates announced or once nuclear plants have reached a lifetime of 40
    years, in order to limit the security and safety threats related to ageing
    nuclear plants;
  • The European Central Bank should stop indirectly subsidising
    environmentally and financially destabilising fossil fuel related
    investments and instead use its highly influential asset purchase programs
    to encourage banks to favour investment in renewables and energy and
    resource efficiency;

Guarantee citizens are at the heart of the energy transition and of a social
Europe

  • The European Commission should put EU citizens at the centre of any future
    reform of EU energy market design; Such reform should promote a resource
    and cost efficient and socially just ecological transition towards a
    highly energy efficient and fully renewable based economy by 2040 at the
    latest; The European Commission should design a future EU energy market
    reform that is based on the principles of solidarity, cohesion, equity and
    justice between Member States, regions and generations;
  • Member States should fully implement the 2018 Clean Energy Package,
    including the rights of renewable self-consumers and renewable energy
    communities; They need, with technical assistance from the European
    Commission, to empower municipalities to support the development of
    renewable energy communities so that citizens can produce, consume, store
    and resell their own renewable energy;
  • Member States should lift existing administrative barriers to further
    accelerate the deployment of renewables with a swift permitting process,
    while ensuring proper public participation and the respect of
    environmental impact assessment procedures; In addition, the European
    Union should complete its infrastructures for balancing renewable energy
    demand and supply across the EU and its neighbours;
  • The European Union should adopt measures and means to strengthen social
    welfare and social protection systems, including the continuation and
    refinancing of SURE (Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an
    Emergency) and the swift adoption of the Social Climate Fund; It should
    adopt an EU Directive for Adequate Minimum Income Schemes that ensures an
    EU-wide minimum income level set at at least 60% of median income before
    allowances for specific needs such as disability so that every citizen in
    Europe can live a life in dignity; Member States should promptly implement
    the recently adopted Directive on Minimum Wages as soon as possible, since
    this will lead to a wage raise of 20 % for 25 million workers across the
    EU;
  • Member States should ensure access to decent and affordable housing for
    all notably by promoting the provision of new and deeply renovated, highly
    energy-efficient housing stock accessible to all and combatting the
    financialisation of residential property, They need to deliver the
    Renovation Wave target of doubling annual energy renovation rates in the
    next 10 years with a particular focus on housing for the lowest income
    groups as well as on the rental market;
  • The European Union should establish a new EU fund, similar to the Recovery
    and Resilience Fund (RRF) based on common EU borrowing redistributed as
    grants and loans and able to meet a substantial part the additional costs
    of accelerating the energy transition to 100% renewables and maximum
    energy efficiency while ensuring the elimination of energy poverty;
  • EU institutions should reform the EU’s complex and short-sighted economic
    governance framework notably by promoting - rather than, as is the current
    case, discouraging - investment in the energy and wider ecological
    transition and the social infrastructure needed to ensure access for all
    to the goods and services necessary for a decent quality of life;
  • Member States should provide increased transparency and regulatory
    oversight of market based and over-the-counter gas trading to reduce
    market vulnerability, price speculation and spiralling bids; EU and
    national competent authorities should investigate, report and address
    possible cases of market abuse or market manipulation in commodity markets
    in general and in the gas market in particular; The European Commission
    should make the “just transition” an explicit and central policy
    complement to the “Green deal” to ensure that socio-economic barriers to
    the fair distribution the benefits and burdens of the ecological
    transition are identified and removed.
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