Energy Supply Security
The guest of honour was François Lamoureux, Director General for Energy and Transport at the European Commission, accompanied by Dominique Ristori, Director for general affairs in the energy and transport directorate general.
The recent and unexpected escalation in oil prices made for an interesting and passionate discussion. The escalation, linked to the fall in the euro against the dollar, has already pushed up inflation an extra point and reduced our growth rate by 0.3% for 2000 and by 0.5% for 2001 The cost of energy imports has increased by 109% over one year. The professions most directly affected have reacted strongly and made pressing demands.
In the light of such pressure, the Commission feels that it would not be appropriate to cut taxes and excise duties as this would merely transfer the tax revenues of the Member States to the OPEC countries. Furthermore, a cut in taxation would run counter to the goals of controlling demand and protecting the environment.
The current situation underlines the European Union’s structural weaknesses in the energy sphere :
• high level of energy dependence,
• the role of the oil price in dictating the price of energy,
to which is added the need to make fresh calls for energy savings. The Commission will shortly be presenting a “green paper” on energy supply security which should launch a debate between all the parties concerned on a number of topics such as the importance to be given to each energy source and the need to reduce the consumption of conventional types of energy. This discussion could provide an opportunity for generating a real demand policy that would enable us to make reasonable choices from a range of options.
Other aspects of security of supply were touched on by a number of speakers :
Oil prices are reputed to push up the prices of other energies ; however, it was noted that this phenomenon did not occur either in the case of coal or nuclear power which are now available in large quantities and at advantageous prices and which lend themselves to more profitable technological developments than many renewable energies. Moreover, there are grounds for believing that in the long run « gas-gas competition » – even between national monopolies from producer countries – will end up creating a competitive market for gas and that the prices for this product will follow a particular pattern;
Along the same lines, it was pointed out that diversification is a factor in strengthening security of supply :
• diversification of energy forms, which again raises the question of nuclear energy and coal;
• diversification of the origins of supplies, which highlights the current action by the Energy Charter Secretariat and the negotiations it is carrying out on the “Transit Protocol “;
The Europeans must adopt a single approach to difficult situations and as a result they must have a single taxation system and a common energy policy and, finally, they should act with persistence.
After pointing out that the Member States never wanted to place energy policy under Community responsibility, François Lamoureux said that if we felt the need for such a policy in Europe today, we would have to end up agreeing on what is the security of our supplies. A sincere attempt to reach this agreement presupposes carrying out a joint analysis beforehand of exactly what our situation is. This is the intention of the « green paper » to be published shortly.
The fight against climate change in which the EU is energetically involved is leading in that direction.