Following an invitation by the IEA Academy the Executive Director of IENE, Mr.Costis Stambolis, visited the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris on April 25 and presented the Institute’s latest findings on energy trends and forecasts in SE EuropeFollowing an invitation by the IEA Academy the Executive Director of IENE, Mr.Costis Stambolis, visited the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris on April 25 and presented the Institute’s latest findings on energy trends and forecasts in SE Europe. The presentation, which can be viewed here, was largely based on IENE’s seminal study the “SEE Energy Outlook 2021/2022” but also included some latest findings on the regional energy market impact, following Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine last year. The event took place at IEA headquarters and was attended in person and online by several senior staff members. It follows a similar presentation made in 2017 at the IEA, upon the release of the previous edition of this major work on South East European Energy.
In his opening remarks IENE’s chairman thanked Mr. Zachary Egan, the IEA’s Academy coordinator, for the Agency’s invitation stressing the established cooperation between IENE and the IEA which goes back many years and covers various facets of energy policy. At the start of his presentation Mr. Stambolis, who was the coordinator and editor in chief of IENE’s “Outlook” publication, praised the IEA for its leadership in consistency highlighting the key global energy issues, such as energy security and climate change, and explained how it’s annual “Global Energy Outlook” report has provided an inspiration to IENE in pursuing its own work,albite on a different scale. “It has to do more with the concept and methodological approach that IEA’s work has influenced our work. In addition its first class validated data has provided extremely useful reference with which to compare and enrich our findings”, added the Chairman of IENE.
In his presentation Costis Stambolis, who is also the current Chairman of the regional organisation which is IENE, focused on the changing energy landscape of the SE European region, its high energy import dependence and related energy security concerns, the difficulties in pursuing a fast decarbonisation path and hence a change of its energy mix. He concluded his presentation by citing the very high investment interest in all different energy areas which the region has attracted over the last 5 years. “ In relation to 2017 when IENE made a similar investment forecast for a 10 year period for the whole region, this time the investment outlook for the current period, 2021-2030, is much brighter at €387 billion total anticipated CAPEX for energy projects in the 13 core country group, which means a +58.5 % increase compared to the 2017 estimates”, added Stambolis.
The presentation by IENE’s Executive Director at the IEA concluded with a lively question and answer session which covered topics such as the hydrogen prospects for SEE, the role of gas in view of lower consumption levels envisaged under present EU policies for curtailing fossil fuel use, the role of CCUS in the effort to minimise CO2 emissions and the difficulties of integrating higher RES output in view of electricity grid constraints.
