The European Commission launches an overhaul of EU environment and energy policy on Wednesday with new proposals that critics already say are too weak to fight climate change and secure future energy supplies. With the latest dispute between Russia and a former Soviet state hitting oil exports to several European Union nations this week, the Commission's proposals come amid growing concern in Brussels about dependence on foreign energy producers. Russia has stopped crude exports through the Druzhba pipeline in a dispute with Belarus.

"This situation adds urgency (to the) drive to boost our common energy policy," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told a news conference in Berlin. "It is another demonstration...that we need a common energy policy." The proposals, billed as a "new industrial revolution" in the energy sector, cover areas ranging from carbon emissions reduction goals to suggestions for splitting off, or unbundling, utility companies' generation and distribution businesses.

By cutting the bloc's consumption, boosting EU electricity from renewable sources, and finishing the creation of EU internal energy market, the bloc hopes to reduce its reliance on outside suppliers while boosting competition at home. But critics say the targets for renewable energy and climate change are too modest and the package lacks the teeth to shape a strong common EU energy policy.

"The Commission looks set to water down its proposals on both ownership unbundling and renewables, revealing Commission President Barroso's bluster about a new industrial revolution as nothing but hollow spin," said Claude Turmes, a Green member of the European Parliament from Luxembourg. EU officials said on Monday the Commission would recommend a break-up of some of Europe's corporate energy giants but would also propose a less radical option allowing power generators to own distributions networks which other companies would operate.

Climate leadership?
The Commission aims to combine energy and environmental policy with a new mandatory target to reduce the bloc's greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, rising to 30 percent if other developed nations join in. Environmental group Greenpeace said committing to a 20 percent cut would undermine the chance of getting a higher target on the world stage.

"We think that this is a political and scientific blunder," said Mahi Sideridou, climate policy director at Greenpeace in Brussels, adding the 20 percent target resulted from political bargaining rather than climate change science. Environmental group WWF on Tuesday urged the EU to adopt a unilateral 30 percent target for cutting greenhouse gases. "Europeans cannot afford to wake up in 20 years time and realise that too little was done, because at that point it will be too late," said WWF climate expert Stephan Singer.

But Christian Egenhofer, senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, said the 20 percent target strengthened the bloc's centrepiece emissions trading scheme. "The industry now knows it's going to continue," he said of the scheme, which sets limits on the amount of carbon dioxide that factories can emit and allows them to trade permits when they overshoot or undershoot their targets. The scheme's next trading period ends in 2012.

The proposals will also encourage the capture and storage of carbon as well as highlight the benefits of nuclear energy without pushing it on EU states that choose not to use it.
(Por Jeff Mason, Planet Ark, 10/01/2007)