Ian Johnston

speaker

28 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 20 Apr

Ian Johnston’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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FT News Briefing · Brussels’ plan to ease the energy crisis · 20 Apr 2026 podcast

So some of the highlights are behavioral recommendations to try and convince EU citizens and businesses to use less energy.

That includes remote working, so encouraging businesses where they can to have at least one day of remote working per week, measures to support the use of heat pumps, electric vehicles, and also encouraging member states to use subsidy schemes for things like public transport.

But they are also going to bring in laws to encourage more electrification.

So they're going to tweak electricity market rules in the EU to lower the price of the transportation of electricity.

That's related to grid charges.

And they're also going to try and make sure that electricity is taxed lower than fossil fuels.

They tried this in 2025 and have been doing so for some years, and the talks broke down.

But there's hope that this more targeted measure will get member state approval because of the energy crisis.

So the measures are inspired by what Brussels and Europe did during the previous energy price shock after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

That also sent energy prices through the roof in Europe.

And so they rolled out recommendations, for example, to turn down thermostats by one degree Celsius.

And so

those small behavioral changes can actually have quite a significant impact on overall energy use.

And we saw a lot of demand reduction in 2022.

We see here that Brussels is turning to the same playbook.

Brussels is very keen and officials I've spoken to are very keen to stress that these are recommendations.

They're by no means binding.

But there's always a question mark over whether the EU is trying to encourage people to do things that they'd rather not do.

I think they're leaving it in the hands of member states to decide whether or not they want to use these measures.

And so we will see if member states decide to take them up on those recommendations.

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