Looking Back and Looking Forward
Garrett Blaney is Chair of the Board of Regulators for the European Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators. He is also President of the Council of European Energy Regulators.
PUF: How was your experience at Electrification 2018?
Garrett Blaney: I had come from Toronto where I'd participated in my first Advisory Counsel of EPRI. Electrification and the process is a big issue in Europe. It was interesting to hear why that's happening and the latest developments in North America. At Electrification 2018, I was surprised at the turnout of eighteen hundred attendees.
PUF: Electrification is similarly a big issue in Europe?
Garrett Blaney: What's happened in Europe is we've done well at putting a high level of renewables on our electricity system, so we've moved to de-carbonize our electricity production, in terms of renewables. We now have over thirty percent of total electricity in many countries, which are now coming from renewable sources.
What we haven't done so well is to address properly the use of high levels of renewable energy in the heating and cooling market and the transport market. Those are the areas where we're still missing targets across Europe.