European Union announces new energy strategy

Europe, with its limited and dwindling hydrocarbon energy sources, is highly sensitive to the resource wars that have erupted across the globe since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As America has launched military adventures and instigated coups in order to dominate the main hydrocarbon supplies and transit routes of the world, Europe has found itself increasingly at risk of having its energy needs curtailed. The insecurity of the European powers has been intensified by the resurgence of Russian power due to current high energy prices. Since Russia turned off the gas supply to Ukraine in January 2006, the editorial offices and corridors of power of the European capitals have reverberated with panicked talk of an energy crisis.

The EU Commission’s plans are largely aimed at enabling Europe to reduce dependence on Middle Eastern and Russian oil and gas. Titled “A European Strategy for Sustainable, Competitive and Secure Energy,” the proposals are also driven by the “free market” ideology that guides the initiatives of the EU, whereby the large nationally based energy companies of the European member states would be forced to open up to greater competition across a new continent-wide energy market.

The paper proposes that by 2020 a series of binding targets should be met by the 27 EU members. These include: 10 percent of automobiles to be powered by bio-fuel; 20 percent of all energy (including electricity, heating and transport fuel) produced from “carbon-neutral” sources such as solar, wind and nuclear energy; the development of “carbon burying,” involving reducing atmospheric carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning power stations by disposing of it by other means. The document also deals extensively with the “liberalisation” of the European energy market.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/ener-j24.shtml