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| Keeping the Lights On in Europe |
| Brussels bank hopes on technology and open markets |
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Bright B. Simons (baronsimon)  |
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Published 2007-05-31 09:54 (KST) |
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Throughout this month and up to the middle of next month, the European Commission has been finalizing consultations towards the completion of its preliminary draft of the "Strategic Energy Technology Plan" (SET).
The draft is scheduled to be completed sometime in the summer. Should everything proceed according to the timetable, the full plan will be ready by the end of this year, all set for an official endorsement by the European Spring Council in 2008.
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FROM THE SECTION |
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| Some of the public consultations launched so far include one inviting opinions from across Europe about the role of biofuels in the near-future "energy mix" that will power Europe, and another on the role of the free market in providing incentives for private investors and industry to get on board the energy security agenda of Brussels.
SET is expressive of the Commission's wish to see technology play the cardinal role in Europe's medium to long-term energy security program. Its approach is threefold: enhance the cost-effectiveness of renewable energies, promote a greater efficiency of energy use within Europe and considerably quicken the pace of integration of low-carbon solutions within European industry, with the aim of making the continent a global leader in industrial innovation.
To ensure that SET does not become, or is not seen as, a wish list, the Commission has been keen to show that it can put its money where its mouth is. From now till 2013, it will increase by as much as 50 percent the budget for energy research and innovation, while doubling the one for the smaller, advocacy-based, Intelligent Energy-Europe Program. In total at least a billion euros will be invested during the coming six years.
Insofar as SET is indicative of the Commission's general strategy for tackling the continent's budding energy crisis, Brussels appears to have settled on the most prudent, realistic and effective method of safeguarding Europe's access to reliable energy supplies. That is to say it has ditched dogma and embraced pragmatism.
Every sophisticated analysis of the situation can only conclude that Europe's energy security, now and in the future, cannot but depend on a strong effort to "diversify" its main energy sources and on the use of superior technological, logistical and auditing systems to address the inevitable, often undesirable, by-products associated with energy use in modern societies.
The transition to a low-carbon economy if it is to be successful must be technology-driven, just as the transition from the agrarian to the industrial was also technology-driven. The role of technology in these contexts is usually, and essentially, "risk management." Unintended consequences and other potentially harmful by-products of radical changes in society increase in proportion to the extent and pace of those changes, calling for rapid technological responses.
It is of course true that a low-carbon economy represents the most sensible aspiration for a continent striving to protect itself from the caprices of unstable energy suppliers, while contributing, at the same time, to the reduction of the effects fossil fuels have on the environment. It will however be naive and dangerous to suppose that this ambition can come to pass "exactly" as leaders wish or even plan for.
If what is sought in the end is that Europe is not plunged into darkness and that, on the other hand, the lights do not stay on at the expense of the environment, then the choices available to European policymakers and the public can not be evaluated on sentimental grounds, but according to hard criteria focused tightly on the twin goals they have set themselves.
To explain my meaning: specific types of energy-sources cannot be viewed as if they are inherently good or bad, rather each must always be assessed, objectively, based on how "precisely" they contribute to the goal in sight. We cannot hence argue, for instance, that even though wind energy has been linked to deaths amongst birds, this situation will be addressed by future improvements in wind technology, if we are not ready, by the same token, to grant that future improvements will also allow us to handle nuclear waste much better than at present.
When deciding whether to go for any type of "renewable" fuel, the optimism Europeans -- and the rest of the world, presumably -- hold in "future improvements" being able to address our concerns about the supply and carbon-content of that fuel should be the same optimism we show for "non-renewable" fuels too, provided we can base either optimism on hard science. We must, further, consider the entire fuel cycle in order to obtain the true economic cost of the fuel in question. We cannot, for instance, embrace biofuels as benign substitutes for petroleum if we are not prepared to "audit" fully the inputs that go into growing the stuff, in terms of tractor diesel, fertilizers, productive land acreage and ground water, because all these various factors have direct "oil equivalency values" -- that is to say that biofuels can turn out to be expensively recycled petroleum. Europe cannot ignore these hard accounting facts because Europe's energy solvency in the long-term depends on them.
By the same token, the same emphasis we give to, say, hydrogen cell research ought to be given to CO2 capture, storage and recycling technologies in particular reference to how their use in coal and/or shale-fired power plants can contribute to easing concerns about carbon content and supply.
If the point is cutting carbon and securing supplies (where "securing" has nothing to do with simplistic notions of deploying gunboats), Europe should stick to it, not pander to uninformed prejudice about particular ways and means.
What therefore emerges is a complex range of considerations as to how different solutions, in both the renewable and conventional energy sectors, can interact through advanced and advancing technology to achieve sustainability both in energy use and in the environment's capacity to support that use. Advancement in technology relies on economic growth -- something that is evident in the fact that the United States spends four times more on energy research than economically stagnant Europe does -- and economic growth depends on a rational use of energy, for reasons of both cost and innovation. Europe is presented, it will seem then, with the possibility of a virtuous circle: let energy innovation grow the economy, and let economic growth fund energy innovation.
That is the reason why, like so many other areas of social concern, where one output becomes an input into another process, many people are doubtful that merely increasing bureaucracy can help in addressing Europe's energy security challenges. Which is also why it is heartening that SET coincides with extensive efforts over the past decade by the European Commission to intensify energy "market liberalization" across the continent, beginning with the seminal 1996 electricity directive. This directive steadily takes power away from the hands of national bureaucrats and decentralizes decision-making across borders and across both public and private sectors.
A common, open, market will clarify the signals that investors need to make private sector funds available to augment the meager public investments; it will enhance competition amongst suppliers and within energy portfolios (i.e. the combination of renewables and conventionals), which, if tied to common benchmarks, will boost innovation and cost-effectiveness at the same time; and allow for effective auditing of energy reform results. That is simply to say that if producers of wind energy know that they are competing with producers of gas-fired electricity, they will up their game and thereby costs, and subsequently prices, will fall in both sectors.
For the truth is that there is no one simple way to keep the lights on in Europe for the near future and beyond. The prudent thing to do is to trust in a highly diversified portfolio, and allow the market and clear, measurable, benchmarks to continually sap out carbon, while limiting foreseeable and unforeseeable risks with technology.
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| A future article may concentrate on particular technologies and particular challenges within a liberalized market economy. Informed readers are invited to contact the author with any leads or constructive criticisms. |
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©2007 OhmyNews
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