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Commissioner Simson speech at the Opening Ceremony of the EU Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW) today.

“Check against delivery"

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to all of you tuning in from near and far across the globe to the EU Sustainable Energy Week 2020!

Today marks a number of important ‘firsts'

• This is the first time the event taking place since we launched the Green Deal;
• this is the first ever time the event has gone virtual.
• And … this is my first Sustainable Energy Week as European Commissioner for Energy, so I am very excited to be here;

This week is about responding to a challenge that is also a first in its kind: a pandemic in a globalised world.

I think there are two ways to look at the situation for our sector: as either a threat or a turning point.

As a threat, we would just focus on how to repair the damage. The pandemic has triggered the largest recession since 1929 and sent shockwaves across the energy markets. Last week we saw new data from the IEA that global energy investment would fall by 20% in 2020, almost double of what we saw in the 2008 financial crisis.

But as a turning point, we should try turning adversity into opportunity. Not by choosing to simply ‘return to normal': don't forget our ‘normal' had us on track to a rapidly heating planet. But by seeing this moment for what it truly is: an opportunity to reignite our economy while driving clean energy efforts even further.

I'm wondering if any of you have seen the map of the world by Stuart McArthur? It's basically a typical representation of the world, except it's flipped upside down with the Pacific Ocean at the centre.

You're looking at the same image you've seen a thousand times, just from a different perspective, and you start to see things you never did before.

What I'm saying is we need to do the same with this crisis. Shift our perspective from seeing the damage that the COVID 19 has done on our lives and our economy and see the opportunity to make a huge leap forward in building a climate neutral society.