European Union - In Transition To Renewable Energy Sources
The deployment of renewable energy plants - in particular we are talking about the following renewable energy sources - wind, water, solar power and biomass - is one of the main goals of the European Commission’s energy policy. There are several reasons for this:
Renewable energy sources are an essential players in reducing Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions - a major Community objective.
Increasing the share of renewable energy in the energy balance is a step towards sustainability. This also secures the energy supply by reducing the Community’s growing dependence on imported energy sources.
Renewable energy sources are economically competitive with conventional energy sources in the medium to long term.
The need for Community support for Renewable Energy is clear. Several of the technologies, especially wind energy, but also small-scale hydro power, energy from biomass, and solar thermal applications, are economically viable and competitive. The others like photovoltaic systems (silicon module panels which directly generates electricity from the sunlight), depend only on the increasing demand and thus production volume to achieve the economy of scale necessary for competitiveness with central generation. In fact, looking at the various sector markets in early 2003, it is probably not over-optimistic to conclude that the lion’s share of remaining market resistance to Renewables penetration relates to factors other than economic viability. This should be seen against the rapidly improving fiscal and economic environment being created in the EU both by European legislation itself swinging into full implementation and the Member States’ own programmes and support measures, which despite the short-term macro-economic background, are accelerating rapidly at the time of publication.
The European Commission’s White Paper for a Community Strategy sets out a strategy to double the share of renewable energies in gross domestic energy consumption in the European Union by 2010 (from the present 6% to 12%) including a timetable of actions to achieve this objective in the form of an Action Plan.The main features of the Action Plan include internal market measures in the regulatory and fiscal spheres; reinforcement of those Community policies which have a bearing on increased penetration by renewable energies; proposals for strengthening co-operation between Member States; and support measures to facilitate investment and enhance dissemination and information in the renewables field.
Read More about Renewable Energy Sources in the European Union:
Latest documents:
20/06/2008
Biofuels Barometer 2008
24/04/2008
Public consultation
Public consultation on “EU Action to promote Offshore Wind Energy”
Contributions will be sent at latest on 20/06/2008
16/04/2008
The European Wind Energy Technology Platform (TP WIND)
16/04/2008
Photovoltaic Energy Barometer 2008
01/04/2008
Workshop on Sustainability Criteria & Certification Systems for Bioenergy
01/04/2008
Biofuels standards: BIOSCOPES workshop
12/03/2008
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