EC looking back to the future: Push for a new industrial revolution

Age
Wednesday 10/1/2007 Page: 10
By David Gow

THE European Commission will today call for "a new industrial revolution", promoting renewable energy and nuclear power to replace dwindling fossil fuels and combat climate change.

Its controversial proposals, outlined in a series of papers on energy policy and competition, are partly based on research published on Monday showing the price of oil and gas is likely to double to $US110 ($A145) a barrel as global reserves plateau. Coal, it says, will stage a comeback prompted by new carbon capture and storage systems.

The commission's white paper foresees European Union energy imports jumping to 65 per cent of consumption by 2030, when 84 per cent of gas and 93 per cent of oil will come from overseas, making the drive to increase the use of renewables, hydrogen and nuclear inexorable.

Its promotion of atomic energy, partly for use in producing hydrogen, is the most controversial aspect of its proposals, as nuclear power is banned in countries such as Austria and is being phased out in others such as Germany and Sweden. It is couched in implicit terms - not least because an EU-wide poll shows only 20 per cent backing for nuclear power.

With the commission setting a minimum target of a 20 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020, nuclear power is seen in the research as providing 30 per cent of Europe's energy demand by 2050. Renewables such as wind power would provide slightly more than a fifth.

But, in a low-carbon scenario, these two would fuel threequarters of power generation, with half of the rest coming from plants with carbon dioxide capture and storage.

The commission's plans are accompanied by proposed measures to break up the monopolist stranglehold of huge energy groups such as France's EDF and Germany's Eon on the internal market and to introduce more competition. But the commission has not yet reached full agreement on the proposal among the 27 commissioners.

Most are said to favour forcing integrated energy groups, deemed to be colluding to prevent new entrants, to sell their electricity transmission and gaspipeline networks.

A minority, grouped around President Jose Manuel Barroso, would prefer to see these networks retained in their ownership but handed over to an independent systems operator.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was asked in an interview yesterday about energy issues, said the public should not be asked to adopt a "hair shirt" approach to tackling climate change. Mr Blair recycles his rubbish in Downing Street but says he will not give up his foreign holidays to save the planet.

The Prime Minister - who has just returned from a controversial winter break at the home of Bee Gees star Robin Gibb in Florida - was asked by Sky News if he had thought of setting an example by forgoing a longhaul flight to Barbados for his summer holiday. Mr Blair said he would be reluctant to give up his holidays abroad - and suggested it would not go down well with his family.