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EUSEW 2024 Highlights

A daily selection of inspiring and thought-provoking highlights from this year’s European Sustainable Energy Week.

Browse our day-by-day collection of photos, tweets and quotes from EUSEW 2024:

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This is EUSEW: highlights from 13 June 2024

Mechthild Wörsdörfer

We really need to work on the buildings; buildings are still 40% of our energy consumption. We need to insulate our houses, introduce more efficient windows, more efficient products in our daily life. That can help us exit the crisis and, of course, reach our 2030 targets. 

Mechthild Wörsdörfer, Deputy Director-General for Energy, European Commission
Rutger Broer

What sometimes complicates the work of local initiatives is that there is no national official definition of energy poverty.

Rutger Broer, Project Manager, Buildings Performance Institute Europe
Andrea Voigt

There is a huge potential in waste heat, which unfortunately still remains untapped. It's 2,860 terawatt hours… and to put it a little bit into perspective, this corresponds to the total primary energy consumption, more or less, in France, so it's huge, but it's not being used. 

Andrea Voigt, Vice-President, Head of Public Affairs and Sustainability, Danfoss
Bitsios

The key message I'd like to leave is that the fate of Europe’s aluminium industry is a very strong indicator of how well we're doing more generally when it comes to industrial decarbonisation and Europe’s Green Deal. The reason that I say this is that the Green Deal is based massively on the electrification of buildings, of road transport, and of course of industry as well.

Nick Bitsios, Head of Brussels Office, European Affairs and Regulatory Advocacy Division, Mytilineos
Victor Ferrer

In order to produce energy, you need a lot of water, typically for cooling so whatever solution we want to find for energy, we need to take water into account.

Victor Ferrer, Director of Vertical Marketing for Building Services at Xylem
Daniele Paci

Energy efficiency means doing the things right, energy demand reduction – energy efficiency –means doing the right things.

Daniele Paci, European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC)
Eunice Silva

We are on a mission to power the planet with clean electricity from ocean waves. Wave energy has been developed over the last decades, and we have now proven it with a commercial scale kit. 

Eunice Silva, Senior Technical Project Manager, CorPower Ocean
Maros Sefcovic

Lowering energy prices must be a priority for all policymakers and decision makers and all business leaders across Europe.

Maroš Šefčovič, Executive Vice-President, European Commission

Rewatch the session: Closing ceremony 

This is EUSEW: highlights from Day 2

Mattew Baldwin

I invite you now to see this work as a down payment on the crucial work that lies ahead, not just to deliver on our 2030 targets, but to guide us towards becoming the world's first climate neutral continent by 2050. The next stage in our journey binds the Green Deal and our competitiveness agenda even more closely together.  

Matthew Baldwin, Deputy Director-General for Energy, European Commission
Carmen Sánchez-Guevara

As we were working with vulnerable populations, we understood that they’re coping with summer energy poverty. And we realised it’s quite complex; I would like to say even more complex than working with winter energy poverty. As there are many variables, it is not only about dwellings; it is also about behavioural patterns and the use of the public space. 

Carmen Sánchez-Guevara, Lecturer, Technical University of Madrid, Spain
Alberto Méndez Rebollo

AI also understands the levels of risk and uncertainty and adapts safety margins dynamically, will detect anomalies and perturbances and it’s also very interesting when there are several options of achieving flexibility.

Alberto Méndez Rebollo, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Plexigrid
Nevin Adija

We have to harness the potential that we have in these local communities. We have to invest in empowering them, in involving them, and also making sure that the knowledge that we have in this room gets even broader.

Nevin Alija, Member of the Global Future Energy Leaders programme of the World Energy Council, member of the EUSEW Young Ambassadors and an EU Climate Pact Ambassador
Ditte Jurgensen

Intelligent digitalisation can make a significant contribution; it is an essential enabler of that energy transition. That's the reason, or one of the reasons, we refer to a twin transition as both a green transition and a digital transition, and they really go hand in hand: one will not deliver fully without the other. 

Ditte Juul Jørgensen, Director-General for Energy, European Commission
Shima

Energy transition entails rapidly building up new infrastructure to facilitate the energy transfer, at the same time also upgrading the existing infrastructure and maintaining the operational functionality while running the grid to the limits. There are several emerging technologies that can help us overcome these challenges, and one of them is artificial intelligence. 

Shima Mousavi Gargari, Corporate Innovation Manager, TenneT
Mirjam Röder

We need to think about the future generation, so when we talk about communities, we also need to think about what the young people are thinking; what do they think they want our energy system to look like in the future? So, it's not just about us today deciding it should be like this and these are our targets, it's also listening to the younger generations.

Mirjam Röder, Associate Professorial Research Fellow, Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute at the Aston University of England
Clover Hogan

What I can tell you is that in my 13 years of activism, working with business leaders, teachers, students, policy makers, is the biggest challenge we need to overcome; it is, in fact, at the intersection of all of these areas. And that is the mindset.

Clover Hogan, Climate Activist and Founding Executive Director, Force of Nature

This is EUSEW: highlights from Day 1

EU presidency Belgian Minister Tinne Van der Straeten.

The European grids should be an enabler rather than a bottleneck for the energy transition.

Tinne Van der Straeten, EU presidency Belgian Minister

Rewatch the session: Opening session

Alain Hubert, Chairman of the Board, International Polar Foundation

The European objective to be zero-emission by 2050 is a very interesting goal. But to reach that, we have to change our behaviour and not continue to develop new technologies systematically.

Alain Hubert, Chairman of the Board, International Polar Foundation

Rewatch the session: Opening session

Morten Peterson, Member of the European Parliament

Only when green electrons can flow freely across our borders and energy efficiency is truly acknowledged will we fully reap benefits of a unified European energy market and transform Europe into a self-sufficient electricity powerhouse, ensuring our collective prosperity and security for generations to come. Much has been done, but there's still so much work ahead.

Morten Peterson, Member of the European Parliament

Rewatch the session: Opening session

Sorcha Edwards, General Secretary, Housing Europe

We have to learn to handle and share our resources, our scarce resources, in a better way. And I think these projects show that it really can be done.

Sorcha Edwards, General Secretary, Housing Europe

Rewatch the session: EUSEW Awards Ceremony

Ditte Juul Jørgensen, Director-General for Energy, European Commission

In order to achieve this reduction of dependence on Russia, we deployed a number of different instruments. One of them was the accelerated deployment of clean energy, of renewable energy in particular, and we have simply facilitated that deployment through a series of measures, investment, financing, but also an acceleration of permitting, a reduction of the barriers to the deployment of renewable energy.

Ditte Juul Jørgensen, Director-General for Energy, European Commission
Alan AtKisson, Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer, Global Water Partnership

If you're aware of the challenge that you face with climate change, ensuring peace and security everywhere, prosperity for everybody, that can be very frustrating work. It can feel pretty much of a burden, but that's really a normal reaction. And don't let those feelings stop you. Keep pushing. Keep dreaming that rock is rolling faster and faster because more and more people are pushing it.

Alan AtKisson, Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer, Global Water Partnership