{"id":357323,"date":"2026-03-31T19:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T19:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/357323\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T19:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T19:48:10","slug":"top-brussels-official-urges-europeans-to-work-from-home-and-drive-less-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/357323\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Brussels official urges Europeans to work from home and drive less \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The more you can do to save oil, especially diesel, especially jet fuel, the better we are off,&#8221; J\u00f8rgensen said, confirming an earlier <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/brussels-urges-europeans-to-travel-less-to-avoid-spiraling-energy-costs\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a> by POLITICO that Brussels wanted Europeans to travel less. <\/p>\n<p>He urged member countries to follow the advice of the International Energy Agency, which he said included &#8220;work from home where possible, reduce highway speed limits by ten kilometers [an hour], encourage public transport, alternate private car access &#8230; increase car sharing and adopt efficient driving practices.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Longer term, he urged EU countries to double down on building more renewables, saying &#8220;this must be the time we finally turn the tide and truly become energy independent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday&#8217;s talks between ministers ended with no concrete proposals, although J\u00f8rgensen promised the Commission would be announcing a package of EU-level measures in the near future.<\/p>\n<p>His comments come as fears grow that the world faces a major energy crisis exceeding even the 1970s oil shock that could have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/iran-war-drives-eurozone-inflation-up-to-2-x-percent-in-march\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">global economic ramifications<\/a> comparable to the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>Since the U.S. and Israel launched the first attacks on Iran over a month ago, oil and gas prices have soared as much as 70 percent as a fifth of the world&#8217;s crude oil and liquefied natural gas supply has been stuck in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n<p>Talks included discussion of the need for state aid, increased renewables and nuclear power to boost energy security, and support for the Commission&#8217;s proposal to boost biofuels, according to one person involved in the talks who spoke about the closed-door discussions on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n<p>Expectations of concrete action going into the meeting were low, according two other EU diplomats. The aim, they said, was to coordinate action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;The more you can do to save oil, especially diesel, especially jet fuel, the better we are off,&#8221;&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5081,138,2814,537,146339,219,1667,49391,8573,16609,5873,85446,111,139,14602,69,4156,2437,157744,1430,6149],"class_list":{"0":"post-357323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-biofuels","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-coronavirus","11":"tag-crisis","12":"tag-dan-jorgensen","13":"tag-economy","14":"tag-energy","15":"tag-energy-infrastructure","16":"tag-energy-security","17":"tag-iran","18":"tag-israel","19":"tag-liquefied-natural-gas","20":"tag-new-zealand","21":"tag-newzealand","22":"tag-nuclear-power","23":"tag-nz","24":"tag-oil","25":"tag-security","26":"tag-state-aid","27":"tag-united-states","28":"tag-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}