Commissioner Simson, Director General La Camera, thank you for organizing the event! Thank you for inviting me! It is a great, great pleasure to be here with you today!

Before addressing the main topic of our panel, considering that many important things have already been said by the previous speakers, please allow me to make two general remarks.

First, I came from Romania a country that was registered as the first oil producer in the world more that 160 years ago. The first world refinery was built at Ploiesti, 50km far from the capital of Romania. The city where I leave, Bucharest, was the first city capital in the world with public lighting based on oil resources. Today, we are leading the energy transition in Central and Eastern part of Europe, having one quarter of our total energy mix and almost half of the electricity consumed coming from renewable sources with the largest onshore European wind farm built in the country, near the Constanta harbor. Moreover, we are in top five in the world in terms of decoupling the emissions from the economic growth. We lead in the EU, together with Croatia, in terms of the lowest emissions level per capita.

The achievements that I have just presented had been possible due to the efforts made by the Romanian people during several decades. However, we are not among the richest EU nations, the size of hearts is sometimes more important than the number of zeros in the treasury accounts.

Second general remark, after couple of days spent here at COP 26 I have noticed a bigger number of problems that I expected. The risk of a disaster for our Planet is much higher than I had thought before. We are more divided than united. We are more competitive than cooperative. There is a lack of trust, lack of responsibility and lack of humanity. Despite of all these realities, If I have learnt anything in my life traveling around the world it is the power of hope. The power of hope could change the world despite all these difficulties. For the generation of Calin and Rares, two Romanian amazing students that are here with us today, for the generation of my son Alexandru who is two years world for all the generations that follow, we should never ever give up our efforts to make the world better and leave a planet to them where they can live.

Now, regarding wind offshore generation… 20 years from the moment when the first offsore wind farm has been installed in the world, in Denmark.

Five years from the moment when the first offshore project in world was completed in Germany without any subsidy.

Four years from the moment when, here in Scotland, the first floating offshore wind farm was completed… Great achievements in a short period of time. Wind offshore is part of the solution to meet the goals of the Paris agreement but we have to fix four major issues soon: lack of the grid connection and integration challenges, still high costs of technology, very high initial cost of capital and long payback periods, lack of know-how on right policy and regulatory regime to be adopted all areas with potential, including eg. the Black Sea area.

On hydrogen, first I read about it when I was nine years old in the book  “A mysterious Island “ published by Jules Verne in 1875. Today, almost 100 million tons of H2 is consumed in the world but very little, less than 5% is green. First priority should be the decarbonization of the current hydrogen production, helping the chemical, petrochemical or steel industries to become more sustainable. I am confident that green H2 will cover around 15% of the global energy mix by 2050 and the future of transport, especially, maritime, heavy trucks and planes will relay heavily on it.

I was appointed by the European Commission in the Governing Board of EIT, the EU institution dealing with innovation and technology in the EU. We created an acceleration Center for green Hydrogen in our InnoEnergy Initiative.

Many things are moving quickly but I must stop because my allocated time is over. If any questions, happy to take them.

November 5, COP26, Glasgow

Razvan Nicolescu (former minister of energy of Romania)