Extracts from the Sept-October 2001 edition of Renew
These extracts only represent about 25% of it

12. EU News

EU to give nuclear 1.23 bn euros ?

As we noted in Renew 132, the European Council proposals under the 6th Framework programme 2000-2006 for European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) include an allocation of EUR 1.23 billion funding for nuclear research projects: EUR 330 million for the Joint Research Centre’s Euratom activities, EUR 150 million for the treatment and storage of nuclear waste, EUR 50 million for other Euratom activities, and EUR 700 million for nuclear fusion. Since 1991 no new nuclear reactor has been ordered in any EU country. Seven of the EU's 15 member states are non-nuclear, another 4 (Germany, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands) are in a process of phasing-out nuclear power.

The plans have created quite a stir. Tobias Muenchmeyer, Greenpeace nuclear expert commented "EU countries are getting out of nuclear power. There is no need for more research in a technology which is dying out. EURO 530 million for nuclear power research is plainly a subsidy to Europe’s increasingly desperate nuclear industry and blocks the pathway towards sustainable energy solutions."

Another EUR 700 million is earmarked for "controlled thermonuclear fusion". Even the Euratom Scientific and Technical Committee (STC) has admitted in a report last year that, "fusion is an energy option which has the potential to play a key role in a long-term perspective (>50 years) ...".

Patricia Lorenz, energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe commented: "The commercial use of nuclear fusion is pure fantasy. Already 25 years ago the same people had predicted that in 50 years fusion would be a viable energy resource, but it seems like we are always 50 years away from fusion becoming economic. The European Council has to stop this waste of millions of taxpayers money."

At EUR 1.23 billion, the proposed budget for 2002-2006 is about the same as the budget for the years 1998- 2002 which, at EUR 1.26 billion was the largest EU nuclear research budget ever.

Currently the European Commission is also considering to propose a raise to the ceiling for Euratom loans for Eastern European nuclear projects by another EUR 2 billion. Also the budgets for the Euratom Supply Agency as well as for the Euratom Safeguards Directorate are constantly growing.

Patricia Lorenz noted that "the new budget proposal for nuclear research comes at a time when the cash-strapped nuclear industry is trying to squeeze out billions from the EU budget from all possible sides by referring to the most anachronistic Euratom treaty. The Euratom treaty is from another age and needs to be abandoned immediately".

REFIT is legal

The European Court of Justice has ruled that Germany’s controversial electricity feed-in law, which supported renewable power producers until last January, did not constitute state aid under the EU treaty nor contravene the bloc's internal market rules. Senior German government figures have immediately called on the European Commission to halt legal investigations into its successor, the renewable energy law (EEG), which offers similar fixed rate premium payments to renewables operators. As we reported in Renew 130, the feed-in law had already received an interim clearance from the advisor to the European Court of Justice. Now that seems to have been confirmed.

EU’s growing global ecological footprint

The EU has improved its resource productivity since the late 1980s, but is consuming more in absolute terms, and is thus imposing an increasing burden on the world environment, according to a new report from the European Environment Agency (EEA). The finding will increase pressure on the European Commission to do more to address the EU’s global "ecological footprint" in the bloc’s sixth environmental action programme and a forthcoming sustainable development strategy.

However help may be at hand. EU industry could emit one-third less greenhouse gas emissions than in 1990 by 2010 if it applied all commercially available technologies, according to a study released by the EC. Much of the reduction could, it says, be achieved at no, or even negative cost, while even the most expensive technologies would carry costs of only euros 50 per million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent saved. Full achievement of this potential would result in substantial knock-on, or indirect, emission savings through lower industrial electricity consumption, the study says. It calculates the additional reduction at 467m tonnes of CO2, which would be equivalent to half of industry’s direct emissions in 2010.

Follow-up:http://reports.eea.eu.int/Technical_report_No_55/en/tech55.pdf  

http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/environment/enveco/climate_change/industry.pdf  

Real Costs of EU Energy

An important new EU EXTERNE study has concluded that the social and ecological damage caused by electricity production costs, 1-2% of the EU’s GDP, and that if these ‘external’ costs were included, then the cost of electricity produced from coal or petrol should double and the cost of that produced from gas increased by 30 %. The current cost of electricity production of 4 cents/kwh compares to external (extra) costs for coal of between 2-15 cents, depending on member state, gas 1-3, nuclear 0.2-0.7, and wind 0.05-0.25. So wind comes out 20-28 times better than nuclear. We will review this study in Renew 135.

EC on energy conservation

The European Commission has proposed a new draft Directive aiming at improving the energy performance of new and existing buildings within the European Union. "Cost-effective energy savings of over 22% can be realised in the buildings sector by 2010: we must take the Kyoto objectives seriously and propose concrete action" said the EC’s Loyola de Palacio

http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&doc=IP/01/604|0|RAPID&lg=EN