Environment

Climate change is the greatest challenge Europe and the World will face this century.

Global warming is no longer a contested phenomenon and has been described by UK Prime Minister Blair as alarming and unsustainable. The 2005 report by the European Environment Agency urged policy makers to act with urgency in cutting CO2 emissions.

The electricity generation industry is the biggest single source emitter of CO2 worldwide due to a reliance on fossil fuels for energy. The effects of climate change will be irreversible if action is not taken now.

A radical change is required in the way energy is produced and consumed. In common with the rest of the world, Europe needs clean, sustainable energy so as to protect the environment and at least stall, if not reverse, the phenomenon of global warming.

The European Union has committed itself to limiting global warming to a maximum 2°C average temperature increase above pre-industrial levels. This requires global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be cut by approximately half by the middle of the century. Global emissions will have to peak and decline in the next one to two decades for temperatures to stay below the 2°C threshold.

In order to overcome its competitive weakness in the market for global energy resources, to tackle the serious problem of climate change and to secure its energy supply indefinitely, Europe needs an energy policy based on its own comparative advantages.

This policy should, in short, lay down criteria for the replacement of hydrocarbons by energy sources which ensure that Europe’s future supply will be environmentally sustainable, immune from global competition and economically competitive.”