By Kate Abnett<\/p>\n
ANTWERP, Feb 11 (Reuters) – Top business leaders urged the European Union on Wednesday to act urgently to bring down energy prices, saying that was key for European industries to be able \u200cto compete with the United States and China.<\/p>\n
The industries’ message is timed to land just before EU \u200cleaders gather in a Belgian castle on Thursday for an informal “retreat” to thrash out a plan for how Europe can compete economically with \u200bChina and the U.S.<\/p>\n
“Why is Europe so much behind compared to the rest of the world? It’s the energy situation,” Swiss specialty chemicals maker Clariant CEO Conrad Keijzer told Reuters as corporate leaders gathered for a meeting in the Belgian town of Antwerp.<\/p>\n
Asked what his main message to EU leaders was, Jon Morrish, CEO for Europe of Heidelberg Materials, told Reuters: “Number one, \u200con energy prices, that they must come \u2060down. They must take us seriously, and they must realize that that is really hampering Europe’s competitiveness.”<\/p>\n
The loss of cheap Russian gas imports following Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine \u2060hiked bills for many energy-intensive industries. Congested power grids, national taxes and the EU’s CO2 emissions price also contribute to power prices – which for industries in Europe are more than double those in the United States and China.<\/p>\n
The EU’s electricity system is \u200bdesigned \u200bso that the last power plant needed to meet total demand \u200bsets the power price. Often, that is a \u200cnatural gas plant – leaving many consumers highly exposed to gas prices, which are significantly higher in Europe than in the U.S.<\/p>\n
“The pricing structure for power is a big challenge,” said Morrish, adding that Heidelberg, the world’s largest cement maker, whose home market is Germany, was starting to move some investments out of Europe due to high energy prices.<\/p>\n
ENERGY PRICES<\/p>\n
Companies and some government leaders complain Europe has failed to address energy prices head-on, despite years of warnings from industry.<\/p>\n
European \u200cCommission chief Ursula von der Leyen, who will also attend the \u200bAntwerp summit, said EU countries needed to better link up their \u200bpower grids to ensure cheaper low-carbon energy can flow \u200bfreely across the bloc.<\/p>\n
“Prices remain too high and volatile. And we know why. It is \u200cbecause of lack of interconnection and grids and \u200bour reliance on fossil fuels,” \u200bshe told the European Parliament on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Commission proposed legal changes in December to slash deadlines on permits for grid projects, to try to speed up the modernisation of power networks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kate Abnett ANTWERP, Feb 11 (Reuters) – Top business leaders urged the European Union on Wednesday to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[35,54412,2000,299,5187,222794,1699,77894],"class_list":["post-757183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-energy","tag-energy-intensive-industries","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-industries","tag-european-union","tag-power-grids"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116052056131742954","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}