EU Background

Energy Supply
Green Paper of 29 November 2000 "Towards a European strategy for the security of energy supply" [COM(2000) 321 final]

The Green Paper published in November 2000 opened up a wide debate in the EU on security of supply (geopolitical, economic and environmental). Most of the stakeholders who gave their opinion on the proposals in the Green Paper, such as the Member States and NGOs, were in favour of the main thrust of the strategy proposed, namely emphasis on controlling demand by, for example, promoting greater energy efficiency.

To download the Green paper click here

The objective of the 2000 Green Paper was to open up a wide debate on the different dimensions of the EU security of supply  It analysed the EU structural energy weaknesses, such as:

• The growing EU energy dependence (the EU imports 50% of its energy requirements and if no measures are taken within the next 20 to 30 years this figure will rise to 70%). This external dependence has economic, social, ecological and physical risks for the EU. 
• The EU has no significant influence on the world energy pricing. This was clearly highlighted at the end of 2000 by the strong increase in oil prices.

Two great challenges were also identified: 

• environmental concerns influencing energy choices, most significantly the action to combat against climate change; 
• the development of the internal market has given both a new place and role to energy demand which could lead to political tension, e.g. the fall in prices could thwart the action to combat climate change. It is up to the societies themselves to find satisfactory compromises.

The Green Paper outlined a long-term energy strategy in which the EU is said to have to:

• rebalance its supply policy by clear action in favour of a demand policy. 
• undertake an analysis of the contribution of nuclear energy in the middle term. 
• provide a stronger mechanism to build up strategic stocks and to foresee new import routes for increasing amounts of oil and gas

Use of Renewable Energy Resources
In 1997, the European Commission published a White Paper on promoting the use of renewable energy sources. At community level, the target is for renewables to account for 12% of total energy consumption by 2010, as against the 1995 figure of 6%. Bioenergy will play a leading role in doubling the use of renewables. The target is to increase the annual use of bioenergy from 45 Mtoe to 135 Mtoe (of which 230 TWh for power generation) in the EU-15.

White paper "Energy for the future: renewable sources of energy" (COM(97)599 final1997)
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/library/599fi_en.pdf

Composition and objectives related to bioenergy in EU-15 (Mtoe)

*: The White Paper suggests 18 Mtoe. However, the final energy consumption for transport can be extrapolated to 390 Mtoe/year in 2010 (average yearly growth rate of 1,8% between 1990 and 2002, applied until 2010). 5.75% of 390 Mtoe are approximately 22 Mtoe (924 GJ). 20 Mtoe is taken as the average.

In the "Energy for the future" document, end-use data on electricity and heat production are reported without reference to the technical assumptions regarding current and future conversion efficiencies. The table below presents a likely division of biofuels over the utilisation sectors that could be expected by 2010.

Source: Siemons (2002)

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