• Vice Councillor Irantzu Allende and EVE Director-General Mikel Amundarain presented tonight the III A3E Efficiency and Sustainability Plan organised by the Business Association for Energy Efficiency.
  • Euskadi has managed to reduce its industrial emissions by 55% thanks to the many programmes promoted since 1990 by the Administration and the active role played by companies

Vice Minister of Energy Transition, Irantzu Allende, closed the III Congress on Efficiency and Sustainability organized by the A3E and El Correo, with the support of the Basque Energy Agency. The event, which took place last night at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, was attended by numerous representatives of companies specialized in strategies and technologies for energy use.
 
Allende highlighted in his speech the government’s determined commitment to push forward ambitious policies that will move towards a smart decarbonisation of the Basque economy by 2050. The main instrument of this objective is the Energy Transition and Climate Change Act adopted at the beginning of the year by a large majority of the Basque Parliament. This law, among other objectives, sets the objective of increasing the share of renewable energies to reach 32% of final consumption. “We have to make this transition in an orderly manner, deepening our strengths, leaving no one behind. Euskadi must be an increasingly resilient country, but it is necessary to promote sustainable and fair development. We want to lead this change together with industry and industry, as well as society as a whole.”
 
In the same vein, we are committed to increasing energy savings and efficiency for Basque consumers “and to achieving energy savings of 12% by 2030 compared to 2021 consumption. Euskadi has been a benchmark in energy efficiency for many years, thanks in large part to the work carried out by the EVE. We have managed to produce the same amount as 40 years ago, but with 50% less energy.”
 
With the aim of implementing public policies on the finer industry axis and less emissions, support for industrial energy efficiency and emission reductions will be strengthened by 2025 to EUR 22 million and supported by a two-year programme of self-consumption and electrification of thermal consumption of EUR 80 million, as announced by the Vice Advisor for Energy Transition. In total, over the next 4 years, aid programmes of 260 million will be activated to boost industrial energy efficiency and emission reductions, as well as to promote self-consumption and electrification of thermal consumption.
 
For his part, the Director General of the Basque Energy Agency, Mikel Amundarain, stressed that the commitment to energy efficiency has not changed in all these years, “perhaps because of the competitive relevance of companies and industries and their transversality. This is evidenced by the constant annual contribution of public funds such as grants and subsidies, which have contributed decisively to the realisation of efficiency projects in all sectors.”
 
At the inauguration of the Forum, Amundarain stressed that “there is no doubt that industry and the rest of the productive sectors have fulfilled their obligations and have achieved significant levels of excellence in this field. Today, however, competition in international markets is increasing, and that’s why we don’t have to lower our guard in any way.”
 
“The Basque Country needs half the energy it needed 40 years ago to create a unit of economic activity… But it still needs a lot of energy. We are a very industrialized country, still very dependent on energy coming from other countries."
 
"It is clear for everyone," said the Director-General of the EVD, "that the establishment of instruments that promote efficiency and encourage investment in this respect is a good way of boosting the necessary private investments from the public sphere. I believe that no policy towards a new energy model can be outside the involvement of the private sector.”