White Paper Spells Out Renewables Policy

The strategy’s main features are:

• the reinforcement of policies, such as agricultural and rural policy, regional policy, and internal market measures in the regulatory and fiscal areas, affecting market penetration of renewables.
• the strengthening of co-operation between EU member states along with measures to facilitate investment and information dissemination. This is crucial to the security and diversification of energy supply in the future, environmental protection and social and economic cohesion.

The increased use of energy produced from renewable energy sources also constitutes an important part of the measures needed to comply with the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A Campaign for Take Off, targeting the key renewable energy sectors, represents a key element of the strategy and action plan outlined in the White Paper.

A goal of the campaign is the identification of 100 communities aiming to meet 100 per cent of their energy needs from renewables. This has caused considerable interest. As part of this initiative, a number of appropriate pilot communities, regions, cities and islands have been identified.

The campaign also aims to encourage ‘renewable energy partnerships’ between the EC and public and private bodies that wish to demonstrate their commitment to the campaign. More than 80 partnerships have already been signed with the Commission. Renewable energy partners include national and regional authorities, municipalities, EU-wide organisations and industry.

Legislative Proposals

In order to reach the 12 per cent aspiration set out in the White Paper, and underlined in the Commission’s Green Paper on Energy Security of Supply, a series of legislative proposals have been made. The Commission has implemented several directives as part of its renewables policy, which include:

• the Directive on the Promotion of Electricity from Renewable Energy Sources, also called the Renewables Directive, which has a target of 22 per cent of electricity from renewables by 2010
• the Directive on the Promotion of the Use of Biofuels for Transport, which proposes a target of 5.75 per cent for the share of biofuels in the transport sector by 2010
• the Directive on Energy Performance in Buildings, which aims to exploit the 20 per cent savings potential in the building sector, which represents 40 per cent of the total energy consumption in the EU.

However, the proposals could put teh brakes on the development of biofuel crops according to some sources.

The are concerns that while the European Parliament's industry committee backed a target of obtaining 10 per of the EU’s road transport fuel from renewable sources by 2020, it has pared back the target for first generation biofuels from 5.75 per cent by 2010 to four per cent by 2015, due to sustainability concerns.

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