European Commission Offers Renewable Energy Action Plan

In parallel, the Commission adopted a report on the different support schemes of electricity from renewable energy sources which concludes that governments need to step up efforts to cooperate among themselves, optimize their supports and remove administrative and grid barriers for green electricity. In the context of security of supply, the EU’s increasing dependency on oil and gas imports, constantly rising oil prices and EU commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the development of renewable energy remains high on the agenda of European energy policy. However the take-off of renewable energy is still on hold with prospects of only nine to 10 percent for the share of renewables in the EU energy mix by 2010 instead of the 12 percent target. The Commission has decided to propose an ambitious action plan to promote the use of biomass energy, a renewable source of energy with a huge potential. Biomass energy includes transport biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel made mostly from cereal, sugar and oil seed crops and waste oils. It includes domestic biomass heating using wood and wood residues, and the burning of wood wastes and straw in power plants to produce electricity and heat. The plan announces more than 20 actions; most of them will be implemented from 2006 onwards. For transport biofuels, they include promotion of “biofuels obligations,” through which suppliers include a minimum proportion of biofuels in the conventional fuel they place on the market. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2005/2005-12-08-02.asp

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