The Energy Union still remain an unknown factor, says Morten Helveg Petersen, a Danish Member of the European Parliament also in the Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.

Member states must cooperate with each other and submit to a European Commission-run governance structure, complete with punitive measures, if the EU is to become independent from Russian gas, argues Petersen, who also stressed the importance of renewables and energy efficiency, according to Euractiv.com.

Nobody knows how the Energy Union will function, but it is one of the tasks of the EC.

“Clearly, this is one of the biggest pressures that the new European Commission is under. It’s a work in progress to put it diplomatically. There’s a lot of curiosity about this. We’ve all seen a lot of papers and concepts about it. We are moving away from an Energy Union that is all about negotiating gas contracts with Putin, but it is still being defined. It’s a great new project in a really dramatic period of EU history”, he said.

“There is an irony in the fact that the EU was founded because of security of supply issues, of coal and steel, and now 50 to 60 years later, we have a situation where too many countries are overly dependent on Russian gas. We have to rise and meet these challenges. We have to have more independence from Putin. It calls for action from EU to define the energy union and for increasing cooperation between member states. Member states are very busy saying energy mix is their prerogative, but we need to have more cooperation.”

EU must use less Russian gas and more renewables, he adds on.

“In the long-term, the key is renewables and energy efficiency. But there’s a lot to be done. Initially, we thought about the Ukraine crisis as a gas crisis. It’s actually more of a heating crisis. We have to come up with way – and the Juncker investment plan will have a role in this – to roll out more district heating and cooling systems in order to increase independence in the long-term.”