EU Energy Week 2024

What is EU Energy Week?

EU Energy Week is the annual flagship event of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Energy. It brings together EU energy ministers, European Parliament members, national regulators, industry representatives, and civil society to review progress on the EU's energy legislation and discuss the regulatory pipeline. Unlike closed ministerial formats, many sessions are public and streamed online, making it a primary source for understanding where EU energy policy is heading.

The 2024 edition took place against the backdrop of the EU's third winter post-Ukraine invasion, with gas storage at record-high levels but underlying questions about long-term LNG dependency, industrial competitiveness (intensified by the Draghi report on EU competitiveness published weeks earlier), and the timeline for ETS2 implementation.

REPowerEU at Year Two: What Changed

Launched in May 2022 in direct response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, REPowerEU had two core ambitions: end the EU's dependence on Russian fossil fuels by 2027 and accelerate the clean energy transition. By October 2024, the headline numbers were mixed but broadly positive on the security side.

• Russian pipeline gas imports fell to roughly 15 bcm in 2023 from 155 bcm in 2021 — a drop of over 90%.
• EU LNG import capacity expanded significantly, with new floating storage and regasification units deployed in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Finland.
• EU gas storage entered winter 2024 above 94% capacity, compared with emergency levels in 2022.
• Solar PV additions reached a record in 2023 and were tracking ahead of plan in 2024.

The less comfortable picture was on industrial energy costs. With European wholesale gas prices settling at EUR 35–45/MWh — well above the pre-2022 average of EUR 15–25/MWh but far below the 2022 spike near EUR 300/MWh — energy-intensive industries continued to face a structural cost disadvantage versus the US, where the Henry Hub gas benchmark traded at under USD 2/MMBtu. The Draghi competitiveness report, referenced heavily in Energy Week sessions, framed this as a long-term structural challenge rather than a temporary distortion.

For pump prices, REPowerEU's most direct impact has been through LNG price dynamics in Europe. Countries that use gas for district heating often see heating fuel prices move with TTF, and in some member states gas is also used in CNG vehicles — linking TTF directly to what drivers pay.

ETS2: The Carbon Price Clock Is Ticking

The most technically dense sessions at EU Energy Week 2024 centred on the EU Emissions Trading System 2 (ETS2), which from 2027 will apply a carbon price to the combustion of road-transport fuels and building heating fuels. Unlike ETS1 (which covers power generation and heavy industry), ETS2 targets fuel distributors, meaning the cost is expected to pass through to pump prices.

The European Commission's modelling — referenced in sessions by DG Climate Action officials — puts the ETS2 carbon price in a range of EUR 45–65/tonne CO₂ once fully operational, subject to the emergency ceiling of EUR 45/tonne that applies until 2030 if prices spike. At EUR 45/tonne, the additional pump-price impact is approximately:

These figures are additive on top of existing excise duty and national carbon taxes. Countries that already apply a carbon tax (Finland, Sweden, Switzerland) may offset part of the ETS2 cost against existing levies to avoid double-counting, but the Commission confirmed this decision rests with member states.

The EU ETS2 and national carbon pricing piece on this site covers the full mechanism and how different member states are approaching the transition. In brief: for drivers, ETS2 is a structural upward step in pump prices across all EU member states, with the quantum varying by fuel type and whether a member state decides to simultaneously reduce excise duty.

The Energy Taxation Directive: Still Stuck in Council

The revised Energy Taxation Directive (ETD) — the Commission's proposal to align energy taxes with carbon content and phase out exemptions, including the longstanding reduced rate on road diesel and the jet fuel exemption for domestic flights — remained blocked in Council at the time of EU Energy Week 2024, requiring unanimity among all 27 member states.

The core controversy is the diesel-petrol differential. Under current EU rules, minimum excise duty on diesel (EUR 0.330/L) is lower than on petrol (EUR 0.359/L), a legacy of 1990s industrial and agricultural lobbying. The Commission's proposed reform would equalise these rates over a ten-year phase-in period. Eastern European member states with high diesel car shares and road-freight dependency pushed back strongly.

At Energy Week, the Commission outlined a possible compromise: a slower phase-in timetable paired with hardship provisions for member states with lower GDP per capita. This framing echoed the approach taken with the Clean Energy Ministerial 2024, where a just-transition narrative was central to securing consensus on more ambitious targets. Whether this is sufficient to break the Council deadlock was left open.

For a full analysis of how the ETD fits into European pump price structures, see our article on EU energy tax reform and pump prices.

Fossil-Fuel Subsidies: Mapping What Remains

One of the more politically charged sessions at EU Energy Week 2024 examined the state of fossil-fuel subsidies in EU member states. A joint European Environment Agency–Commission exercise mapped subsidies using three definitions: explicit subsidies (direct transfers and tax expenditures below the standard VAT rate), implicit subsidies (pricing below social cost, including unpriced carbon), and crisis-era emergency subsidies introduced post-2022.

Key findings:

• Explicit fossil-fuel subsidies in the EU totalled an estimated EUR 64–99 billion in 2022, the high range including crisis relief measures.
• Emergency measures — fuel VAT cuts, excise duty suspensions, and pump-price caps — cost member states a combined EUR 60+ billion in 2022–2023, most of which was unwound by mid-2024.
• Structural subsidies — reduced rates for road diesel, agricultural fuel rebates, and below-VAT rates on heating fuels — remained largely intact across the majority of member states.
• The Social Climate Fund (EUR 86.7 billion over 2026–2032) is designed to offset ETS2's distributional impact, channelled through member-state programmes to vulnerable households and small businesses.

For a broader comparison of subsidy reform dynamics globally — including Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America — our Asia subsidy reform coverage and Middle East fuel prices article provide useful counterpoints to the EU's relatively structured approach.

Subsidies keep pump prices artificially low relative to their full cost. The EU's gradual removal of these through ETS2 and ETD reform means that European pump prices are on a structurally upward path from policy alone, even if crude oil prices remain flat. Understanding what a fuel subsidy is and what feeds into the pump price is essential context for reading EU energy week outputs.

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