Arias Cañete, at ESADE's 4th Energy Meeting: 'The problem is the lack of a single internal market: Spain has an interconnection rate of just 3%'

‘The Iberian Peninsula is among the worst-connected, with an interconnection rate of just 3%’, said Miguel Arias Cañete, EU Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy, this morning at ESADEgeo’s 4th Global Annual Energy Meeting. The event, held in the Bertelsmann Space, brought together the main leaders, analysts and executives in the energy sector. Jointly organised with KIC InnoEnergy, BCG, Energía y Sociedad, and the European Commission, the event sought to take a deeper look at the challenges faced by governments and companies one month before the Climate Change Summit in Paris.

‘We need safe, clean, affordable energy with ambitious mitigation commitments’, said Arias Cañete, who believes it is necessary to fight for an integrated energy plan, as well as investment. ‘The problem with our energy sector is that we do not have a single internal market, but rather 28 fragmented national markets.’ ‘The Iberian Peninsula is among the worst connected, with an interconnection rate of just 3%’, he added. To change that, the commissioner underscored the importance of investment and advocated maintaining the current level of €200 billion a year.

However, according to Javier Solano, president of ESADEgeo, to achieve this model, representative agreements must be reached in Paris, as we are currently at a point of no return. In particular, to achieve the energy union, Solana emphasized the need to reach agreements with the most important producers, the US and Russia, and to monitor the evolution of hydrocarbons in the US, as ‘it has increased production by 80% since 2008 and, by 2020, will become a net exporter of natural gas’.

ESADEgeo’s 4th Global Annual Energy Meeting featured, amongst others, Aránzazu Beristain, acting head of the European Commission’s representation in Spain; Gürkan Kumbaroğlu, a professor at Boğaziçi University (Turkey) and president elect of the International Association for Energy Economics; Ignacio Martín, president and CEO of Gamesa; Nick Butler, who writes on energy for the Financial Times; Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University; Andreas Goldthau, an associate with the Geopolitics of Energy Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; and Denis Simonneau, a member of the executive committee and director of European and International Relations for ENGIE.