MEPs look to EU’s energy strategy

The European Parliament’s Industry Committee set out wide-ranging recommendations for the EU’s future energy policy in a non-legislative report on January 21. After a meeting in Brussels last week, the committee advocated emergency action plans, more grid interconnections among Member States and new climate targets to be achieved by 2050, including raising the share of renewables to 60 percent of total consumption. The committee adopted by a large majority a report drawn up by French Liberal Anne Laperrouze (ALDE) on the “Second Strategic Energy Review,” which will be on the agenda for the March 19-20 European Council debate on the EU’s future energy strategy.

 The report suggests a rapid revision of the 2004 directive relating to the safety of the natural gas supply. “The risk of a major crisis exists during the next decade. European solidarity in the field of energy must become a great European cause: to attack the energy supply of an EU Member State is to attack the supply of the whole of the EU,” Laperrouze said. Through the adoption of this report, the Committee announced that investment must be made in the networks and interconnections in order to develop a pan-European network and to diversify the supply routes to the EU.

These two elements are inseparable elements to guarantee the safety of supply. Laperrouze said that in the short term Europe must immediately develop renewable energy and energy efficiency, which also creates employment, within the framework of the Economic revival plan presented by the European Commission. In the medium to long term in order to avoid the risk of a shortage by 2030, the EU must create a Europe wide roadmap in order to programme investment needed for the production and transport of energy and build a research and development programme to develop energy for the future: renewable energy with a particular stress on solar energy and fourth generation reactors. She also called for intelligent networks and energy storage.

The expected fossil fuel shortage and subsequent increasing global demand, the climate change challenges and the dependence of the EU are good enough reasons for the EU to develop a European Energy policy based on the needs and capacities for the decades to come, Laperrouze said. Even with the help of ambitious energy saving plans, the EU is likely to still be dependent on third countries for supplies of fossil energy in the medium term, MEPs said. The EU currently imports 50 percent of the energy it consumes - a proportion which could rise to 70 percent by 2030. Therefore, the committee called for negotiations for a wide-ranging new agreement replacing the 1997 Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with Russia, which supplies 42 percent of the EU’s imported gas and over 30 percent of its imported crude oil.

The committee also called for projects to diversify supply routes, such as the Nabucco, Turkey-Greece-Italy (TGI), and South Stream pipelines. “In the longer term, when political conditions permit, supplies from other countries in the Caspian region, such as Uzbekistan and Iran, should represent a further significant supply source for the EU,” MEPs said. MEPs stressed that sufficient liquefied natural gas (LNG) capacity is needed - meaning that liquefaction facilities in the producing countries and LNG terminals and ship-based re-gasification in the EU should be available to all Member States.

MEPs also called on the EU’s heads of states to adopt new climate targets to be achieved by 2050: a 60-80 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions, a 35 percent improvement in energy efficiency, and a 60 percent share of renewable energy in the EU’s total energy consumption. Saving energy is “the most effective and cost-efficient way of improving energy security,” MEPs said, calling on the Commission and Member States immediately to adopt a legally binding energy efficiency improvement target of at least 20 percent by 2020. The two other “2020” targets - reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent and increasing the share of renewable energy to 20 percent - are already fixed by the EU’s climate change legislation, adopted in December 2008.

The committee also said it considers it important to maintain nuclear energy in the EU’s energy mix and calls on the Commission to draw up a “specific road map for nuclear investments.” MEPs stressed that nuclear energy is to be used “at the highest technologically possible level of safety,” adding that the EU’s neighbouring countries, too, should adopt European nuclear safety standards every time a new nuclear plant is planned or an old one is upgraded. Furthermore, MEPs said the Commission and Council should develop joint models and procedures together with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to prevent the peaceful use of nuclear energy from leading to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

However, some MEPs claimed that the industry committee report has put coal and nuclear at the heart of energy policy. Speaking after the vote, Rebecca Harms, vice-president and energy spokesperson of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament, commented: “The EU is facing major energy policy challenges, with the recent gas dispute once again highlighting the problem of depending on unreliable regions for our energy needs. The EU must also look beyond current events and face up to the urgent need for action against climate change.” “Although our past energy policies have got us into the current mess, industry committee MEPs seem content to stick their heads in the sand and place outdated technologies at the heart of a strategy aimed at securing our energy future.

They rejected amendments underlining the need to shift our energy system away from one based on the wasteful use of imported, dirty energy sources towards a system based on the efficient use of domestic, renewable energy sources. Instead they adopted a backward-looking report that foresees coal and nuclear as the future for EU energy policy,” Harms said. Coal and nuclear are not answers to the world’s current and future energy challenges, she said. CO2 from dirty coal-fired power plants will make climate targets unattainable, the MEP added.

“High-risk nuclear power plants will continue to produce waste to which we have no satisfactory safe, long-term storage solution. In any case, the enormous cost involved with a nuclear expansion and the length of time before any real increase in nuclear capacity would be possible, make nuclear the wrong answer for securing our energy future,” Harms said. The MEP called for a strategic approach to prioritise a smarter and more intelligent approach to the way Europe uses energy, combined with an expansion in renewable energy, including the necessary investment in the distribution infrastructure - such as grids and pipelines - to make this possible.