Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-02-Speech-1-119"
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"en.20090202.16.1-119"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in spite of the good atmosphere in which we worked on the Second Strategic Energy Review, I regret to say that we did not manage to obtain the corrections to the Commission’s proposal that I believed necessary.
To my mind, the title ‘Strategic Energy Review’ has strong connotations of building for the future. If we take a look at this review, however, we have to conclude that it is all very much rooted in the past. At the heart of this strategic energy plan – and I am afraid the Laperrouze report does not put this right either – is the old energy mix of coal and nuclear power, and indeed there is an extremely sharp focus on the nuclear pillar once again.
I do wonder, Commissioner Piebalgs, what has happened to the proposals you presented to us at the start of this legislative term, when you told us that the great risks associated with nuclear energy had to be brought under control, that the problem of nuclear waste, the funding of decommissioning and all these issues had to be resolved before the Commission made any positive moves towards the development of nuclear energy. Not one of these issues has been resolved, and yet the Commission is now launching this pro-nuclear offensive. The fact that one of the greatest debacles in the history of the Western European nuclear industry is taking place right now in Finland, that the amount in dispute between the Finnish electricity company and Areva has now reached EUR 2.4 billion, because so many extra costs have arisen at the Olkiluoto site, does not seem to worry you in the least. What, I wonder, is the sense of this new investment drive in a sector which, despite receiving decades of public investment – far exceeding the volume staked in all the other sectors – is once again producing this kind of mess. I would very much like to know whether you actually mean all of this seriously or whether other hands are pulling the strings.
In my view, this mix of coal and nuclear power is precisely the strategy that has driven the energy policy of the European Union up a blind alley. I have said enough about nuclear power, but the wasteful use of fossil fuels – something else that the review does not really address at all – has also contributed to the present climate disaster, and the essential adjustments to this outdated strategy of yesteryear are not being made in this review.
In the deliberations on Mrs Laperrouze’s report, my group established clear priorities. It goes without saying that nuclear power was not one of them, but we tried to bring about real changes in other areas too. We wanted the target of a 20% reduction in the consumption of primary energy to be made binding at long last. That did not happen. We expect a realistic proposal for the development of the ‘supergrid’, in other words a network that must be able to incorporate really large capacities for the generation of energy from renewable sources by the North Sea, in other coastal areas or in southern desert regions. There was no real sign of any of these things at all in either the report or the Commission’s proposal.
We also believe that it was a big mistake to leave the whole realm of transport out of this strategic planning process on energy, because we – like you – want to get away from dependence on oil. You have decided that transport matters should be discussed separately, but in our opinion this issue should be one of the key focal points of strategic energy planning.
Diversifying gas supplies is all very well, and it is certainly something we should do, but at the same time every effort should be made to ensure once and for all that gas is used efficiently, otherwise diversification will get us nowhere at the end of the day.
I was appalled last week to learn that the European Commission’s Recovery Plan is revisiting all of these strategic distortions and adopting the same backward-looking approach as this Strategic Energy Review. I must announce on behalf of my group that we shall be supporting neither the Laperrouze report nor the Strategic Energy Review and that we shall also endeavour in the context of the Recovery Plan to argue the case for sustainability and common sense."@en1
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