Balancing energy needs with environmental protection

Date: 30/05/1996

ENVIRONMENTAL protection was one of three priority areas identified in the European Commission's White Paper on energy published at the end of last year.

Despite the fact that the document was widely criticised for lacking substance, it showed that policy-makers appreciated the importance of limiting the damage done not just to the Union's air quality, but also to its international policy commitments in the energy sector.

Without entering into great detail, the Commission nonetheless insisted on the need to develop energy-efficient technologies and energy conservation.

Given that they create little 'traditional' pollution, renewables should be increasingly promoted, it argued, pointing to work already under way as part of its Altener programme.

But in a recent speech in Norway, Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard said several member states could still do a lot more at national level to save energy and promote non-fossil fuels.

In its Fifth Environmental Action Programme, the Commission suggests that the best way of integrating environmental concerns is to internalise the external costs of energy production, working firmly with market forces.

Electricity generation is reckoned to account for about 35&percent; of the total primary energy consumption in the EU and 30&percent; of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide. It is also responsible for producing vast quantities of toxic sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxides.

Nuclear power - regarded for so long as the panacea for the production of large amounts of energy without the obvious drawbacks of fossil fuels - now suffers from a severe image problem.

Even some of those who still rely heavily on nuclear energy have shifted their allegiance since the Chernobyl disaster. France stands alone as a major supplier to the European market of electricity produced in its nuclear stations.

Greenpeace, a vigorous campaigner against the nuclear sector, believes it is crucial to rewrite the terms of the Euratom Treaty - which pledges to create the conditions “for the development of a powerful nuclear industry” - and points to Austrian calls for a specific treaty chapter on renewable energy.

The nuclear issue takes on extra resonance in the EU's relations with the applicant countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs). In a number of recent disputes, the Union has called upon some of the CEECs to close down “dangerous” nuclear stations, notably the Bulgarian Kozloduy station.

The former Soviet bloc countries retort that they have few alternatives.