Greenpeace, working in partnership with the German Aerospace centre(DLR), released a report detailing an “energy revolution” which it believes demonstrates that an 80 per cent cut in the emissions of Europe-27 (27 member countries of the European Union) countries is not only plausible, but it will also make Europe a role model for the rest of the world.
This report follows an announcement by the German Environmental Agency earlier in the week where it suggested that Germany could derive all of its electricity from renewables by the year 2050.
The report details two scenarios – the energy revolution and the advanced energy revolution – requiring different levels of investment to deliver an 80 to 95 percent cut in emissions respectively while creating jobs and providing energy security for Europe.
Sounds good in principle, but there are many challenges.
First, the report acknowledges limits to power generation from renewable sources based on technologies available today, in that the total power generation from renewable sources will not be sufficient to meet our current energy demands. Addressing this issue, the authors of the report suggest that a significant proportion (between 38 – 39 per cent) of the cuts in emissions will be delivered from a reduction in energy consumption via intelligent use of energy.
“Intelligent use, not abstinence, is the basic philosophy for future energy conservation.”
Such energy efficiency increasing measures include incentivising use of efficient consumer devices, replacing ageing infrastructure, more electric cars, freight trains as well as micro-generation and cogeneration plants.
A second related issue is the cost. The energy revolution is an expensive one with high initial set up cost, although it can be recouped by 2050 when using fossil fuels will become prohibitively expensive.
“Assuming average costs of three cents per kWh for implementing energy efficiency measures, the additional cost for electricity supply under the advanced Energy [R]evolution scenario will amount to € 82 billion per year in 2020 and € 73 billion per year in 2030, compared to the Reference scenario [...] By 2050, the annual cost of electricity supply will be € 85 billion per year below those in the Reference scenario.”
Third, the report’s authors assume that the uptake of renewable energy devices will be high once a uniform EU green taxation scheme is implemented (the proposed scheme includes taxing agriculture and transport – the two sectors currently not covered by the Emissions Trading Scheme), and all subsidies to power generation and transport industry are removed.
Considering the high cost of the proposal and the state of European economy this is a difficult assumption to swallow.
Ballooning fiscal deficits and austerity measures make the investment unaffordable, while mounting political pressures, as the recent experience of Spain demonstrates, have resulted in new subsidies for coal and mining industries instead of investments into renewables.
The other benefit of the high initial investment, projected by the report, is that it will provide up to 830,000 jobs in the European renewable power sector by 2015, 260,000 more than in the Reference [Business-As-Usual] scenario. This promise of new job creation may make the investment politically attractive.
However, given the recent financial turmoil in the Eurozone, it is hard to envisage that the 27-member community will be able to get its act together for a Europe-wide investment in technologies that the energy revolution so heavily depends on.
