A concerted crisis effort to improve energy efficiency in buildings and industry and scale up renewable energy could permanently reduce fossil gas demand in the EU by 1200 terawatt hours in the next five years, a new Agora study finds. This would allow the EU to avoid 80% of today's Russian gas imports by 2027 and enable a 100% displacement of these imports when combined with alternative supplies such as LNG.

Proposed priority actions for the RePowerEU plan would reduce 480 terawatt hours of fossil gas use in buildings through energy efficiency, district heating and a heat pump revolution, 223 terawatt hours in industry, particularly through electrification in low and medium temperature heat processes, and 500 terawatt hours in the power sector by ramping up system flexibility and wind and solar PV in the next five years. These savings amount to a permanent reduction of overall gas consumption by around 32% by 2027, saving the EU between 127 - 318 billion euros on gas imports within that period.

“The necessary measures to permanently reduce fossil gas consumption go hand in with what’s needed to meet the EU’s climate targets”, says Matthias Buck, Director Europe of Agora Energiewende. “The EU now needs to make sure that RePowerEU accelerates energy efficiency and renewables expansion to achieve energy sovereignty by 2027.”

As a key element for delivering RePowerEU, Agora Energiewende proposes a new EU Energy Sovereignty Fund. Equipped with an initial amount of 100 billion euros until 2027, it should only support investment needs not covered by existing EU funds, and especially bolster fiscally fragile Member States.

“Achieving EU Energy sovereignty requires solidarity in shouldering the necessary public funding”, says Buck. “Commitments around the establishment of a new Energy Sovereignty Fund framework should ensure that existing EU funds are repurposed wherever possible, and that governments smartly combine price signals and the protection of industry and low-income households.”

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