New Energy for Europe

This is an article I wrote in May 2006 and which I think is still very relevant.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin temporarily switched off the gas supply to Ukraine in a price dispute at the beginning of 2006, affecting also many parts of the EU, he opened our eyes to a potential future with the Kremlin sitting on the weightier - and well-oiled - lever of foreign policy.

Europe reacted with papers and diplomacy. Instead of joining forces to find a strategic solution, carbon heavy travel was on the rise as European leaders jetted back and forth to Russia and Central Asia competing for national energy deals. The European Parliament’s trade committee even proposed the diversification of energy supply by offering a trade deal to the repressive regime of Turkmenistan.

Putin’s challenge is less of an economic and more of a political challenge. It is a challenge to Europe’s ability to promote its values in the world, and to do so consistently. In this context, looking at short term energy security in isolation is too narrow a strategy response, a response which leads Europe into a cul-de-sac of higher prices and greater indebtedness toward unstable and repressive regimes.

To create alternatives you have to think alternative. EU leaders need to look at the bigger picture. Only by putting Putin’s challenge to Europe into a bigger picture will we come to realise it as an opportunity to re-energise the European Union. This bigger picture links energy security with climate security and the future of Europe. Long-term energy and climate security as well as foreign policy independence depend on the development of new, clean energies and a dramatic rise in energy efficiency.

In its 50th year the European Union is in a mid-life crisis. This is not just an institutional crisis following the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty by French and Dutch voters in 2005. Rather the EU lacks a vision after many big projects have been completed: the internal market, the Euro and the unification of Western and Eastern Europe. The Lisbon Agenda for the creation of jobs and growth, you may recall, was an attempt to be relevant. But it has not delivered much beyond lofty statements.

The European Union needs a big idea which is relevant to its citizens, unleashes innovation and creates jobs. We believe this big idea should make the EU the most energy and resource efficient economy in the world. Europe would then utilize its strength to become a positive global leader on the most pressing issues the world faces today

One of those pressing global issues is climate change. The Earth’s atmosphere is dangerously warming up due to the paramount role of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal in feeding the global economy. The burning of these fuels accounts for 75% of the annual increase in the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). And this continues despite scientific proof that temperatures may increase by up to 6°C by the end of this century unless drastic action is taken. Even an increase of no more than 2°C, currently the EU’s declared target, would have catastrophic consequences, putting the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions at risk due to rising sea levels and freak weather extremes like storms, floods and droughts. Already global warming leads to conflicts over access to water and agricultural land, to increased poverty and to migration.
A radical move from fossil and nuclear (old) to clean, renewable energy sources and energy saving-technologies (new) is required. The recent Stern report in the UK makes a convincing business case that investing seriously in climate protection now will pay off economically in the long-run – and prevent a major economic recession triggered by the impacts of climate change.
The EU response to the crisis has been a mixed bag: a pioneering emissions trading scheme that is yet to deliver the necessary emission cuts; lip services on energy efficiency and renewables without clear coordination between Member States over measures to achieve them; and an Energy Green Paper underwritten by defensiveness over the need to diversify oil and gas supply – and not by putting the focus on shifting away form fossil fuels altogether.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin is using Russia’s energy resources and the billions of extra Petro Euros, as a foreign policy weapon to regain Soviet-style grandeur at the expense of democracy in Russia and its near abroad.

News from Russia is bad: Mr Putin and his political technologists have created a hybrid democracy in which the economy, the media and increasingly civil society are controlled by Putin’s state. Russia’s so-called managed democracy does not shy away from asserting the Kremlin’s views forcefully on opponents inside and outside Russia.

How should we move forward?

European leaders and civic society should link the issues of securing our climate and securing energy sources, and use the gauntlet laid down by Russia as an opportunity to re-energise the European idea. This is an opportunity to invest politically and economically in a European project we call ‘New Energy for Europe'.

New Energy is clean, climate-friendly and efficient. It is an investment which offers long-term security to all sectors of society. This is not an appeal for new declarations. It is an appeal for making New Energy for Europe the centrepiece of European Union policy for the next decades. Doing so would fill the empty Lisbon agenda with content and deliver innovation, competitiveness and jobs. It also implies the EU taking on a leadership role in fighting climate change and making energy a positive force in foreign policy rather than a negative one. New Energy for Europe will gradually reduce the EU’s energy dependency on Russia, ultimately affecting the Kremlin’s ability to maintain and export its model of “managed democracy”.

New Energy for Europe means in practice a New Energy Pact which will:

create an EU legislative and budget framework in favour of innovation and investments in renewable energies and in energy efficiency technology (new energy)
phase out subsidies and incentives for old and climate-damaging energy sources and shift those subsidies to new energy
internalise external costs of dirty energy with a tax, and invest revenues into new energy
make a decisive shift in the EU budget, which will be reviewed in 2008, towards massive investments in new energy
set ambitious and binding sectoral targets for the share of new energy by 2020, such as 25% for the heating and cooling sector, 35% for the power sector and for cars to emit an average of not more then 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer
push for a global accord providing for binding annual CO2 cuts in line with the need to limit global temperature increase

The German EU presidency in the first half of 2007 can turn Mr. Putin’s challenge into an opportunity for the European Union. Chancellor Angela Merkel has stated that foreign policy relations with Russia as well as energy and climate change will be the main topics for her EU Presidency. By linking these topics Ms. Merkel could lay the ground for an ambitious ‘New Energy for Europe’ pact, which would deliver energy and climate security, renewed European foreign policy independence and a re-energised vision for the European Union to overcome its mid-life crisis.

While long-term in nature, the decision to build Europe on New Energy would send an immediate message to citizens and business in Europe, and especially to the Kremlin.

Are we exporting the wrong model?

At the weekend I saw Ann Leonard present the Story of Stuff - a critique of our consumer society. Although this is not much new, it is well put together and shows that our society is in overdrive and heading the wrong way. I don't want to repeat what she has to say, you can watch her presentation on www.thestoryofstuff.org .

But do we, in the West, do even more harm than portrait in the presentation/film. We have not only build the most successful consumer society which is based on ever more exploitation of our world, but we also agressivly promote this model to the rest of the world. An this will be the downfall of the system. As long as a relativly little community (The West) lived along this system and exploited the rest of the world, it had a fair chance of survival. Now that the rest of the world is catching up with us (because we want them to for economic and social reasons), the system will collapse. That is not the key problem as systems are replaced by other systems. The question is whether the system will break and be replaced before mankind collapses or after. So, in our own interest, should we not stop to promote the consumer society model to the rest of the world?