No ‘dirty methods’ to make clean energy, Prodi urged

Date: 12/06/03

By Karen Carstens

A CROSS-party coalition of four MEPs have written to European Commission President Romano Prodi, urging him to ensure that 'clean' alternatives promising a brave new energy future are not produced via 'dirty' methods.

Claude Turmes, Nicholas Clegg, Eryl McNally and Anders Wijkman, in a 10 June letter, ask Prodi to consider their concerns before he receives a high-level group of experts on 16-17 June who have drawn up a 'Hydrogen Vision' blueprint for the EU.

The Union currently lags behind the US and Japan in investments in hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.

"It is not quite clear what direction this is going in," said Turmes, a Green from Luxembourg. "There are many unclear and dangerous formulations in the report."

The MEPs praise Prodi for promoting hydrogen, but warn that it is no "silver bullet" in itself. They claim an EU hydrogen strategy must "be based primarily on renewable energy, and not, as in the US, on fossil fuels and nuclear". Hydrogen can be used to power fuel cells, which can in turn power cars, buses or even boats. The only by-products are water and heat. But to harvest pure hydrogen as a source of energy it must be extracted from water, natural gas or coal gas. The primary energy sources needed for this process can come from renewables - solar, wind, hydro and geothermal - or from nuclear or fossil fuels.

"If we're going to insist upon measures which boost the hydrogen economy in Europe, it's significantly important not to lazily sit back and assume that it will all be based on clean energy," said Clegg, a UK Liberal. "That is the orthodoxy which we are trying to challenge."

But the nuclear industry argues that it provides a clean method of producing hydrogen as well (see Page 4).

Turmes said most of the experts convened by Prodi are from the nuclear or fossil fuel industries, whereas renewables representatives are few and far between. One key suggestion from the MEPs is for the EU to agree on a target for reduced energy intensity of the European economy - for instance 2.5 per year - and add this objective to the Lisbon Strategy of making the EU the world's most competitive economy by 2010.