The CEO of the Portuguese utility EDP has connected rapid renewables adoption to Europe’s energy independence, telling CNBC that investment in the field needs to be “far quicker.”
“These are indigenous resources — wind, solar — that we have in Europe,” Miguel Stilwell de Andrade remarked on Friday morning’s “Squawk Box Europe.” “As a result, we would become less reliant on external energy sources, whether gas or coal.”
He believes that the answer is to accelerate and move considerably faster, particularly in the renewables sector.
The executive’s remarks come at a time when tensions between Russia and Ukraine have brought energy independence ideas to the forefront of many people’s thoughts.
According to Eurostat, Russia was the largest exporter of both petroleum products and natural gas to the European Union last year.
The EU, of which Portugal is a part, aims to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030. In terms of renewable energy sources in its energy mix, a proposal has been made to enhance the present aim of at least 32% by 2030 to at least 40% by 2030.
“To strengthen EU energy independence, we must continue to invest in renewable energy sources, but we must also do more to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels,” stated the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm.
“In general, we have high ambitions in Europe in terms of what we want to accomplish,” de Andrade added, referring to the Paris Agreement.
The 2015 agreement intends to “keep global warming to far below 2 degrees Celsius, ideally 1.5 degrees Celsius, relative to pre-industrial levels.”
De Andrade, for one, believes the key is to “accelerate that on the ground, convert it into national plans, translate that into tangible projects on the ground.”
EDP as a firm aims to be coal-free by 2025 and to generate 100 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2030.