The European Commission is planning on putting forward emergency measures to help the EU cope with the high price of gas and electricity, as gas exceeds 10 times its price last year.

Commission president Ursula von der Leyen stated that plans are being formulated for an emergency intervention co-ordinated by Brussels, commenting too that a “structural reform” of electricity market is on the table, when speaking at a conference on Monday.

“The skyrocketing electricity prices are now exposing, for different reasons, the limitations of our current electricity market design,” von der Leyen said.

“It was developed under completely different circumstances and for completely different purposes. It is no longer fit for purpose.

“That is why we, the Commission, are now working on an emergency intervention and a structural reform of the electricity market,” she said.

Ireland to back reform

Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan told TDs and senators at Tuesday’s Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Environment that Ireland would back proposals which sought to reform the electricity market in the face of rising consumer bills.

Minister Ryan commented that the “decoupling” consumer electricity prices from gas prices could be one of these proposals and remarked that rising electricity bills were “the biggest problem facing the Government”.

“The market needs reform and we will support that when it comes from the Commission,” said Minister Ryan.

However, the Green party leader warned that he was not expecting the proposals expected from Brussels to be a “miracle cure” because of the scale of the gas price challenge facing Europe.

Battery lithium blackmail

Von der Leyen also warned of a growing dependency on some countries, particularly China, for the raw materials needed for the rollout of renewable energy generation technologies.

“Out of the 30 critical raw materials, today 10 are mostly sourced from China. So we have to avoid falling into the same dependency as with oil and gas,” she said on batteries.

“We should not replace old dependencies with new ones.”

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