World
  |
|
Renewable energy: High costs. High hopes
By Catherine Marciano
AFP
BRUSSELS
Petroleumworld.com 03 09 07
EU leaders were set Thursday to thrash out ambitious proposals for boosting the use of renewable energy sources, something few countries have greatly exploited due to high costs and uncertain returns.
"The thing about renewables is that they still need to be technologically developed," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a press conference ahead of the opening Thursday of a two-day EU summit in Brussels.
The exploitation of the gamut of low carbon emitting renewables -- including solar, wind, wave, biofuel, geothermal -- are currently championed by just a few nations.
However, the EU member states are seeking to take the lead in the battle to cut down on the greenhouse gases held responsible for global warming, 80 percent of which are attributable to energy consumption.
Merkel, presiding over the summit in the Belgian capital, was seeking an agreement that renewable energy sources should make up 20 percent of total energy used by EU nations by 2020.
That means tripling the current EU-wide figure of between six and seven percent.
If they really mean to show their commitment, the EU leaders will have to agree to make the 20 percent target binding, a much more contentious task. And even those figures will not satisfy the environmental lobby.
"
The EU's energy action plan ... will fall a long way short in making Europe's energy more sustainable unless targets for both renewable share and reducing greenhouse gases are raised and tightened," said Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Jan Kowalzig.
Industry needs such clear-cut decisions in order to make the long-term investments necessary, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso was to urge the summiteers Thursday.
Europe has already tried to push the use of renewable energies. In 2001, the member states agreed an objective of 12 percent of total energy use by 2010.
At the rate they are going they won't even reach double figures percentage-wise by then, according to Commission experts. This is due to the high cost of the investments involved as well as the complexity of the renewable systems, the newness of the technology and the decentralised nature of the operations.
The Commission noted that whatever progress has been made was "the result of the determination of some member states".
Nine of those -- Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden -- are on track to reach the objective of around 20 percent of electricity generated from renewable fuels.
"This is no time for self-satisfaction," the Commission said in a January report. "The majority of member states are well behind in their efforts."
As far as biofuels -- to replace petrol in cars -- are concerned, development remains embryonic in Europe.
Only France, Sweden and Germany are targetting at least one percent biofuels. Germany itself accounts for two-thirds of the EU's total bio-fuel consumption.
Merkel wants EU member states to take the long view.
"If you think of the short term, renewables may not be important but if you think 50 years from now, then it makes a difference," she said.
On Thursday the 27 EU leaders were nonetheless expected to impose a 10 percent target for biofuels in overall transport consumption by 2020.
In the heating and cooling sectors, renewables currently represent less than 10 percent of the energy consumed, with little upward movement. Here the EU has adopted no legislation.
The European Renewable Energy Council wants clear objectives for the use of renewables in all sectors "to inspire confidence in investors".But the European business group, Business Europe, opposes all mandatory targets.
"Nobody has the foggiest ideas of what the costs, social costs or financial costs can be," the group's president Ernest-Antoine Selliere told the press conference with Merkel on Thursday.
AFP 081302 GMT 03 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
Your
feedback is important to us!
We invite all our readers to share with us
their views and comments about this article.
Write to editor@petroleumworld.com
Any
question or suggestions, please write to:
editor@petroleumworld.com
Best
Viewed with IE
5.01+
Windows
NT 4.0, '95, '98 and ME +/ 800x600 pixels