EU boost for renewable energy

A major boost to renewable energy and energy efficiency development in the Mediterranean and non-EU Eastern Europe is now on the cards, following a ministerial conference here last Thursday.

Entitled "Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency - Innovative policies and financing instruments for the EU's southern and eastern neighbours", the conference was organised by the German EU presidency.

The conference's final conclusions indicated a broadly-based consensus urging a new vision for EU's external policies to promote a strong uptake of alternative energies in neighbouring states - invited to 'align' their targets to the EU's "according to their capabilities". Innovative financial mechanisms to mobilise private capital would be a key driver to this process.

The 200-plus participants from 31 nations comprised 25 EU and European Neighbourhood countries (Mediterranean and non-EU East Europe) energy ministers and state secretaries - meeting together for the first time. Also present were business leaders, academics, bankers, senior EC officials and five environmental NGOs, including the Malta Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energies Association. However, neither the Maltese government or business/financial sectors were represented.

In her opening statement, the Federal Minister for Economic Co-operation and Development Heidimarie Wieczorek-Zeul, urged nations to shift rapidly towards a new energy era of more climate-friendly alternatives for power generation using renewable energies. Nuclear energy was "no alternative".

The recent Africa-Europe Energy Forum hosted by the German presidency was aimed to forge an energy partnership for sustainable energy management, and could point the way for a similar approach for Europe's immediate neighbours.

Germany is one of the largest bilateral donors for alternative energy, the minister pointed out, with €1.6 billion worth of projects in 45 countries, providing over €300 million annually from its Special Facility for Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency. To meet the huge costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change impacts, "we should not be scared to try innovative financing instruments," the minister emphasised.

Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel (who visited Malta last week) added that last month's European Council signalled Europe's political will for a change of course on energy systems. The Commission had recently launched a Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund (GEEREF), to promote private investments in developing and newly industrialising countries.

"The expansion of renewables use must take place in the three sectors electricity, heating/cooling and transport, while huge energy savings are possible in the buldling sector", he stated." There is also enormous and still untapped potential in solar power.

Studies by the German Aerospace Centre find that solar thermal power plants in southern Europe and northern Africa could play an important role in securing a sustainable European energy supply by exporting electricity via a European 'supergrid' linked to the South Mediterranean countries. Solar power plant projects were underway in Morocco, Algeria and Egypt; others were planned planned in Libya and Jordan.

In a radical departure from the low funding to date for renewable energies and energy efficiency, the European Investment Bank announced that a new €300 million lending facility for these energies was expected to be launched in July.

Presentations from a dozen energy ministers from neighbourhood countries reported a broad range of policies and future targets, from downright modest to dazzlingly ambitious in the case of Tunisia and Egypt. Egypt would host a Centre of Excellence for Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the Egyptian Minister for Electricity Hassan Ahmed Younes announced. The Syrian Minister for Electricity, Ahmed Khaled Al Ali reported that the fourth Middle East and North African Renewable Energy Conference (MENAREC 4) would take place in Damascus (June 21-24) focusing on EU-MENA co-operation.

A joint statement from the five NGO representatives at the conference - from Georgia, Ukraine, Germany, Morocco and Malta - issued some sharp criticism of the present European Neighbourhood Policy and Euro-Mediterranean Partnership approach to renewable energy and energy efficiency. Both processes lacked a sustainable energy approach, were obsessively focused on the EU's own internal energy agenda, "stuck in the status quo" and badly out of touch with recent findings on the urgent need for climate change policies.

In response to the NGO appeal to the Portuguese presidency starting July 1 to "turn things around" at the forthcoming fifth Conference of Euro-Mediterranean Energy Ministers in November, a Portuguese government spokesman confirmed that alternative energies and climate change issues would be "introduced"at the event.

NGOs urged that all neighbourhood countries should be invited to adopt the EU's legally binding targets issued by the European Council last month as "aspirational" goals, to be adequately financed and fully supported by a new multi-stakeholder energy partnership mobilising the intellectual potential of all non-state actors.