Europe's energy
chief will this week reveal his blueprint for massive new gas pipelines,
high-tech "electricity highways" and up to 8,000 km of pipes for transporting
and burying greenhouse gases, a leaked draft shows.
Energy Commissioner
Guenther Oettinger last week issued a warning over gas and oil imports and
unveiled a strategy for investing 1 trillion euros ($1.4 trln) over the next
decade to bolster energy security.
On Wednesday, he
will add detail to that strategy by launching a second report: "Energy
infrastructure priorities for 2020 and 2030 -- a blueprint for an integrated
European energy network".
Oettinger has
received support for plans, in a leaked draft of that blueprint, to build
"electricity highways" to distribute vast amounts of electricity generated by
windfarms in the North Sea and solar power parks around the
Mediterranean.
But a vision of
thousands of kilometres of pipelines to transport carbon dioxide from power
stations and bury it in depleted gas fields faces a mixed
reception.
Critics point to a
recent study commissioned by Oettinger's team, which found that carbon capture
and storage (CCS) technology might barely get past the testing phase before a
widespread shift to green power lowers the carbon price and destroys
incentives.
Green group
politician Claude Turmes said CCS would need heavy taxpayer subsidies unless the
carbon price in Europe's cap and trade scheme were to reach 60-80 euros per
tonne, compared with about 15 euros today.
"It's a non-proven
technology," he added. "There are easier and less costly potentials in renewable
energy for reducing Europe's carbon footprint and enhancing its energy
security."
For a summary of
the leaked draft, click here:
SOUTHERN
CORRIDOR
Others in Europe's
energy debate counter that CCS is too important a technology for cutting
greenhouse gas emissions for it to be ignored.
"CCS may account
for roughly 12 percent of emission reductions by 2030 and 22 percent by 2050,"
said Giuseppe Lorubio of power industry body Eurelectric. "This clearly tells
you how important CCS is for our sector but for the industrial sector
too."
The plan also
envisages major north-south electricity cables to carry renewable energy from
the North Sea and Mediterranean to central Europe, helping dissipate spikes in
production that might otherwise overload local networks.
"We really need a
European market for renewable energy to help offset its intermittency, and
interconnections are a primary condition for that to develop," said
Eurelectric's Susanne Nies.
The shift towards
lower carbon energy sources also looks set to benefit gas producers such as
Russia and Azerbaijan as Europe strives to limit coal consumption and hit
targets for lowering CO2 emissions to one fifth below 1990 levels over the next
decade.
Dependency on gas
imports will increase from around 60 percent today to reach 73-79 percent of gas
consumption by 2020 and 81-89 percent by 2030, says the
draft.
As Europe's top gas
supplier, Russia currently provides about a third of that, but efforts are
underway to prevent that share from growing -- mainly by developing a "southern
corridor" for gas imports from the Caspian region.
"The strategic
objective of the corridor is to achieve a supply route to the EU of roughly
10-20 percent of EU gas demand by 2020, equivalent roughly to 45-90 billion
cubic meters of gas per year," says the draft.
That is one of the
clearest definitions yet of what the EU hopes to achieve in the Caspian
region.