Momentum for integrated climate and energy policy
Your Royal Highness, Prince Laurent, Ms Morgan, Martin Bursik, Vice Prime Minister and Environment Minister of the Czech Republic,
Andrej Vizjak, Minister of the Economy of Slovenia, Mohammed Boutaleb, Energy Minister of Morocco, and My friend and colleague Jan Szyszko, Polish Environment Minister,
Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Rüte, Professor Zervos,
a warm welcome to our conference.
I am very glad that so many of you have accepted our invitation and have come from Germany to participate in this joint event of EREC, the Commission and the Federal Environment Ministry. I am particularly delighted that so many colleagues from the European Member States have joined us here.
We are facing an extremely difficult, but also an interesting challenge in Europe, and not only in Europe. In the years to come, we will have to solve two decisive questions. Two questions that affect every human being on Earth, questions that challenge all regions of this world in equal measure.
The first question, the first challenge is: How do we supply mankind with sufficient and affordable energy? The international climate protection negotiations do not usually start off with the question of what we can jointly achieve through climate protection. The first question usually is: What do you in Europe, in America, in the industrialised countries of this world do to give those two billion people who today do not have any access to electricity, to energy, what do you to do to give those people access to energy?
Only then is the second big question asked:
How can we act jointly to ensure that energy consumption in future does not have the disastrous consequences for the climate and for life on our planet that we have frequently experienced and discussed in the past weeks and months in all parts of Europe.
The first question is of course linked to economic growth, to social prosperity and a better life in many parts of the world. To achieve this, people usually need access to energy.
Nobody in the industrialised regions of this world, in Europe, will be able to ban people in other parts of the world from striving for a life that is as comfortable and as good as we have enjoyed for many years.
This goes hand in hand with growing energy demand. Today 6.5 billion people live on our planet. In just a few years and decades, we will become more than 9 billion people. If we continued to use as much energy and resources in the next 50 years as we did in the past 50 years, we would probably need two planets to support mankind. However, we do not have two planets, but the world population will still grow, and with it the demand for energy and resources.
Today 1.4 billion people on our Earth live in industrialised societies. Within the next few years and decades, this figure will probably rise to 4 billion. These people will want to drive cars, produce steel and claim a higher living standard. This will be connected with a tremendous increase in the demand for energy and resources.
I believe that we can only tackle these two challenges, secure access to energy and climate protection, by working together. One truly positive signal in the past weeks, particularly here in Europe, was that the European Commission contributed to integrating the often isolated debates on energy and on climate change.
Far-reaching proposals have been put on the table of the European consultation bodies, proposals for the improvement of security of supply, of access to energy and price stability in the energy sector, and also proposals to help us to produce future energy in a way that is not as harmful to our climate as the methods of the past. The Commission has submitted valuable proposals and the German Presidency has a great interest in supporting them with its strategy and course.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am convinced that Europe as a continent is the right place to cope with both challenges, the question of energy supply and the question of climate protection, and to develop appropriate solutions. The reason is that both challenges can only be met by exploiting the opportunities of technological development.
We will not be able to solve the problems of growing industrialised societies with the approaches of agrarian societies. Rather, we need investment in research and technological development to ensure both energy security and climate protection. The region with the greatest experience, whose prosperity and economic, social, cultural and ecological development over the past 200 years was based on technological innovations, research and development, is Europe.
Our continent has made its achievements on the basis of qualifications. Well-trained people, scientists, technicians, engineers, skilled workers, merchants, employees are the foundation of Europe’s development. They have been the solutions to the challenges of the past, and thus will certainly continue to do so.
This is why the Lisbon Strategy stands for growth, employment and economic development. However, it also has to include technological development in the energy sector and in the area of climate protection.
A German consulting company has just presented statistics according to which it can be assumed that the global turnover for energy technologies and environmental protection technologies in the years to come will double to 2,200 billion euro by the end of 2030. In my country, we are already observing that the renewable energies sector has the largest share in this. I do not know of any other branch of industry in Germany that has created 170,000 jobs in the past few years, over a short period of time. I could mention sectors where 170,000 jobs were lost, but newly created?
This great number of jobs was created in the renewable energies sector alone, but there was one prerequisite, and this is what we would like to discuss in the next two days, but also during the six months of our EU Presidency.
The prerequisite for
- The development of branches of industry
- Investment of companies in renewable energies,
- The fact that a large share of steel production in Germany is based on renewable energies,
- The fact that almost 70% of German wind energy production is exported,
are reliable framework conditions.
Without the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), without clarity on which goals the state pursues and which instruments it has chosen to achieve these goals, there would have been no secure future prospects.
This enormous boom of a new branch of industry with 170,000 employees would not have been possible.
And we know that we have not fully reached our expansion goals. Germany has set itself the target of providing 20% of electricity from renewable energies by 2020. We assume we will even reach 25%. This means that the number of employees will probably double.
I am also particularly delighted that the great commitment of this industry will help us overcome a European and German problem – youth unemployment. This sector will provide 5000 additional training places for young people in our country within the next two years. That means that secure framework conditions in this area provide not only answers on energy supply and climate protection, but also the opportunity to secure jobs.
I think that one of the two big technological issues that we will discuss in coming years is the topic of energy efficiency. We need better and more intelligent energy management. Prince Laurent has just given an excellent example. We should devote more attention to the question of how we can also make old buildings more energy efficient and not only set standards for new buildings.
I believe that there is both a huge potential for employment and a technological potential we have to exploit.
In future 9 billion people will be living on Earth. Regardless of how efficiently we consume coal, gas and oil, in the end just being efficient won’t be enough. We can extend the timespan for the use of fossil fuels, but in the end they remain finite.
This is why the second big challenge, besides the improvement of energy efficiency, is the expansion of renewable energies in the Member States and the development of technologies, which allows us to also export renewable energy technologies to other countries of the world. I am convinced that renewable energies as part of sustainable, forward-looking energy supply offer a number of unparalleled advantages:
- Renewable energies make a major contribution to climate and environmental protection, they are CO2 neutral.
- Renewable energies increase security of supply. Of course we know that Europe strongly depends on energy imports. In 2020 the EU could be 70% dependent on imports. At the same time, traditional energy supply structures are becoming increasingly insecure – and if you permit me to remark, this is not due to political conflicts, but rather to the scarcity of resources. Quite frankly, I am not so much concerned about potential disputes between Russia as a current energy producer and former member states of the Soviet Union than about a second pipeline to China, since the latter would mean that demand is growing. However, resources are limited, and prices will rise as a consequence. This will affect our population, but of course also the European economy, because it is an export-dependent economy which has to ensure price stability.
- Renewable energies create jobs and spark technical innovations, but above all,
- Renewable energies are our answer to those countries of the world that ask the European Union which energy technologies to use to promote economic growth and at the same time decouple growth and CO2 emissions, economic success and destruction of the climate.
These are the most important questions we have to answer. Otherwise we will not be successful in the international climate protection negotiations, for example with China, Brazil, India, Mexico and the whole of the G 77 states. These countries have every right to demand from us a technological answer to the question of how to decouple economic growth and the destruction of the Earth’s atmosphere, that is: CO2. If the European Union, as a centre of technological development, cannot come up with this answer, no one else will be willing to strive with us for progress in the international climate protection negotiations. I therefore believe that the development of the “Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund (GEEREF)” was a smart and valuable initiative of the Commission and will enable us to provide more than one billion euro to fund investments in efficiency and renewable technologies in newly industrialised and in developing countries. I know that this is an initiative we have to step up in the years to come.
At this point, I would like to again thank my Polish colleague, Jan Szyszko, who agreed with me and some others in Nairobi that this fund should continue to be increased. Because it is a real answer to the challenges, and because we know that also in Europe, renewable energies are often slightly more expensive than conventional energy production.
We cannot expect any developing country to purchase renewable energies from us if we do not offer better and more cost-efficient alternatives with regard to productivity. I think we have to achieve that in the years to come.
The United States has become our competitor in this market. Possibly less out of interest in environmental protection than out of strategic interest in independence of oil and gas imports, the USA strongly focuses on the expansion of renewable energies. I believe that competition in the field of renewable energies can be a motor of productivity development, of cost reduction and economies of scale, which will help us to actually establish these technologies on the world market.
The European Union has to keep pace. The EU is unlikely to reach its expansion goal of 12% for 2010 without intensified efforts. This is why a long-term political framework is so vital.
The Federal Government and the EU Presidency are thus supporting the Commission approach of an EU-wide target of a 20% share of renewables in energy supply by 2020, and thus in the primary energy share of the European Union. This means that some countries will remain below this target due to their geographical position, and others will exceed it. In other words: there will be a burden-sharing mechanism. I think everyone is fully aware of this.
The overall target is to be implemented in binding, national targets followed by allocation to the individual sectors. Major progress has been made in the electricity sector in recent years, especially in the areas of wind energy and biomass. Offshore wind energy offers huge potential.
It is therefore extremely important to improve the framework conditions for the expansion of offshore wind energy. We are succeeding in doing this in our country. We expect an installed capacity of up to 25,000 MW in Germany by 2030. Europe-wide there is even greater potential: the Commission considers an installed capacity of over 50,000 MW to be feasible for offshore wind energy by 2020. This concept is groundbreaking: it means that in 20 to 30 years we will produce a considerable amount of our energy offshore, rather than focussing exclusively on land-based power plants.
We will be hosting another workshop in February to discuss this potential. The outcomes of the workshop can be incorporated into a future action plan for offshore wind energy. This needs the support of the Commission. Renewable energies are a highly innovative field: In order to exploit the massive potential of natural forces we need intelligent instruments and concepts, in particular with regard to improving the productivity of electricity grids. They have to take in and distribute strongly fluctuating volumes of electricity. The large-scale storage of electricity is also an important topic.
If we manage to develop such instruments, this opens up a new field of activity which is frequently discussed at renewable energy conferences in northern Africa, an electricity grid between northern Africa and Europe.
We all know that we are sometimes lacking political vision, that we are too much caught up in our day-to-day business. The Americans once developed such a vision in a difficult phase during the 1960s and called it “Man to the Moon Project”. I think one such Man to the Moon Project could be the idea of using the Sahara sun to produce electricity for northern Europe.
I know that we still have a long way to go to achieve this, but why not? In my country, photovoltaics is experiencing a great boom, but despite climate change, Germany has a mere 860-900 hours of sunshine per year. This might improve slightly due to global warming, but I do not suppose it will. In contrast, Egypt and other north African countries have more than 4,000 hours of sunshine per year. Therefore I think it makes more sense to produce intelligent photovoltaics technologies in Germany, but to discuss how they can also be used in other parts of the world. They offer a perspective for energy production in northern Africa that goes far beyond oil and gas fields. The lifetime of the oil and gas fields may be another 100 or 200 years. The lifetime of the sun will be four billion years. This is a very good investment in the future.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
There is also a great need for action with regard to the use of renewables for heating and cooling. This is the sleeping giant of renewable energies. There is enormous potential which can be tapped most cost-effectively with established technologies. In the North, the heating of buildings and process heat account for a large part of energy consumption. In the South, buildings have to be cooled intensively during the summer. Spain's legislation on solar power will soon make it a pioneer in heat utilisation. Portugal and other countries are following suit. In Germany, we will launch an offensive before the end of this year with a heat act.
As a matter of urgency, therefore, I would stress to the Commission that, despite intensive political discussions, there is a gap at European level in this sector which needs to be filled. We must wake this sleeping giant and harness his strength!
The German government and the Presidency therefore expressly welcome the proposal for a cross-sectoral directive for renewable energies containing national overall targets. These targets should be binding. Each Member State is then obligated to submit a National Action Plan indicating sectoral targets and measures to achieve the individual targets. Although the role of the EU is extremely important, the political will of the individual Member States is the key factor in this, we have ample opportunity to become active ourselves.
However, I believe that we have to go one step further in the area of research and development, because we are already facing competing uses in the renewable energies sector. We want to use renewable energies for electricity production, for heating and cooling, for transport fuels, and of course we also need a lot of cultivated land for food production.
There was news last week that corn bread for the poor population in Mexico has become 60% more expensive, because the United States mainly uses corn for the production of biofuels as a substitute for diesel and petrol. Of course we cannot promote the use of biomass if it has such disastrous consequences for the poorest of the poor.
I therefore think that in future, we have to focus more intensively on the question of how to get more out of every single plant. In traditional petrochemistry, it is very common to split up a m³ of gas or a litre of oil at the beginning of the production process. It is split up into the component needed for energy generation, the component that can be used for biofuel production and the components to make cellulose or textiles. We often do things differently when it comes to the use of renewable raw materials.
We subsidize the first plant to use it for electricity production. We subsidize the second plant next to it to make biofuels, and we use the third plant for cellulose production and provide technology funding. In view of economic and technological development, we have to consider ways to get more out of each individual plant in order to keep such competing uses within reasonable limits.
We need research and development for biorefineries, which is, by the way, something that the United States of America has placed at the centre of their development. We have to invest more in research and development, firstly, in order to avoid such competing uses, and secondly, to make sure that we speed up technological progress, that we quickly become more productive and secure our competitiveness.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am convinced that this is a concept that offers Europe tremendous opportunities and allows it to draw on its core competencies.
To illustrate this, we could ask, if China becomes the workbench of the world, Brazil the farmer of the world, India the service provider and Russia the petrol pump, what will Europe become? What is the role of our continent in such a global division of labour?
I think it is the role we have always played. We are the engineers and technicians of this world. This is the intrinsic competence, the core competence of our continent, and if we develop it further it will help us to find answers both to the question of energy supply and to the questions of climate protection and renewable energy deployment.
Thank you very much for your attention!
