Improving competitiveness of the European refinery sector, paving the way for the North–South Corridor, and providing the continent with more gas supply options. These were the main topics of discussion between Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President of the European Commission, in charge of Energy Union, and Paweł Olechnowicz, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Central Europe Energy Partners (CEEP). The meeting, which took place at the LOTOS refinery in Gdańsk, Poland, served as an occasion to tackle Central Europe’s most significant challenges in the field of energy. One of them is the relocation of EU refining capacity to unregulated regions, with lower energy costs and softer emissions regulations. Paweł Olechnowicz underlined that Europe needs a healthy domestic refining sector, especially in an era of geopolitical upheaval. “Improving competitiveness of the European refinery sector is crucial not only to hold back capacity decline and loss of thousands of direct and indirect jobs in the EU. It is also detrimental to the global environment as the manufacturing of oil products in the EU refineries is, on average, considerably less carbon intensive, when compared with the rest of the world. To face that challenge, we believe the refinery industry should receive 100% of the CO2 allowances until 2030, so that it can face international competition from regions where ETS is not applied,” Paweł Olechnowicz stressed. Legislation supporting competitiveness of the energy sector should be accompanied by investments in infrastructure and actions aimed at providing Europe with more supply options. In this context, Maroš Šefčovič emphasised the role of the North–South Corridor, whose aim is to connect Central European energy markets, both with each [...]
In a few words
We represent the widely understood Central Europe energy sector (electricity generation, distribution and transmission, renewables, gas, oil, heat generation and distribution, chemical industries, etc.), universities and scientific institutions.
