New EU commission to focus on securing energy supply
EU flags, Brussels/ Belgium (source: flickr/ Ingvar_Sverrisson, creative commons)
Francisco Rojas
7 Oct 2014
Ewa Krukowska from Bloomberg posted an article yesterday on Renewable Energy World exposing the growing concerns in the EU with carbon emissions and the increasing unrest in Russia.
According to the article from Miss Krukowska, “Energy and environment ministers from the EU’s 28 member states are meeting in Milan today (6/10/14) to help build a compromise before a summit on Oct. 23-24 where the bloc’s leaders are expected to decide on policies for 2030. The challenge for governments is to reconcile the need for cheaper and safer energy while accelerating the pace of emissions reductions.”
Areas such as safety of energy supplies, supporting integration of local renewable energy sources or achieving energy self-sufficiency were key topics to discuss.
Modernization is not the only concern. The dependency of the EU on fossil fuels from Russia is seen as a potential problem looming in the distance. The same article states that “the EU energy strategy includes developing interconnections, modernizing infrastructure and diversifying supply sources. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president-designate of the next European Commission, has vowed to move toward an energy union with forward-looking climate policy as a pricing dispute led to the cutoff of Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine, the transit country for around 15 percent of the EU demand for the fuel.”
Ukraine is currently a hot political issue and will also take a significant part of the talks.
It is worth mentioning that geothermal could be a clean energy solution for the matter, specially when seen from the perspective of district heating.
To read the full article, please follow the link below:
Source: Ewa Krukowska from Bloomberg – Renewable Energy World
