Ms Kadri Simson:

I thank the Chairman for his question. In the medium term, we see that it is possible to replace Russian imports with diversifying supplies but, in the main, we have to replace Russian fossil fuels with home-grown renewables. We can replace natural gas with clean gases. We will ask our member states to promote biomethane production, for example, because it is something that might give us additional alternatives. It could provide 35 billion cu. m of our own gas production.

On hydrogen, we will need molecules in some sectors because electrification there is technically impossible and not economically viable. Last December, the European Commission presented our hydrogen and gas decarbonisation proposal. With that proposal, we tried to create a well-functioning hydrogen market in Europe. We will set clear rules and identify what is green hydrogen. By doing so, we expect that our international partners will also consider that this kind of certification for green hydrogen will be internationally accepted. There are sectors where green hydrogen in its fullest form is necessary, such as industrial production, as well as some transport modes that are more challenging. Aviation and maritime shipping come to mind in that regard.

Where we can, we will use electricity because promoting electrification helps us to avoid losses. That is why our REPower EU plan includes an annexe with necessary interconnections and investments. Members may have noticed there were some oil pipelines. We had to give alternative supply routes to landlocked countries that currently receive crude oil from Russia. We absolutely tried to avoid investing EU funds in fossil fuel pipelines. The need we identified only came to €2 billion. Then we said we needed an additional €28 billion for electricity interconnections because we should get rid of natural gas from power generation, for example, and, of course, one needs green electricity to replace it. There are several hours when offshore wind farms, for example, will produce more electricity than the grid consumes and this makes a perfect business case for hydrogen production. We know that by the end of the decade, European industry will consume more hydrogen than we will be able to produce here, so we set a very ambitious target to produce 10 million tonnes of green hydrogen in Europe and import 10 million tonnes from our neighbours. One of those neighbours will be Ukraine. We have committed to help it rebuild its economy. Instead of being a transit country for Russian oil and gas, it could be a producer of green electricity and renewable hydrogen.