Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-15-Speech-2-707-000"
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"en.20110215.33.2-707-000"2
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"Mr President, I feel I also made a very strong statement. Firstly, I would emphasise that the World Bank energy strategy is very welcome because the World Bank plays a very particular role in the world, particularly in dealing with development issues. It is not an understatement to say that they are leaders of public opinion and approaches to development strategies. My point is that we should address this issue with all seriousness.
I believe that the EU has already taken some steps in the right direction, but we could really take more steps to provide real leadership for the world, not least by addressing the World Bank’s energy strategy.
At the same time, we should not forget a couple of elements that are very crucial when we are estimating our answer to the strategy. There are still a substantial number of households today that have no access to any type of energy. It is true that, although we have been discussing the issue for 20 years, substantial investment in the energy sector or energy service provision have not been delivered to hundreds of millions of people, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. So I believe that we need to understand the scale of the challenge.
The second point that we need to take into account is growth. Each of the countries that are on the path of development have an immense growth in demand. We should respond to growth in demand with supply. There is an additional fundamental challenge because of the scale of this.
The third point – and here I fully agree with Ms Keller – is sustainability and anticipation. Whatever the energy sector does should be considered in the light of the consequences that it has on climate change. We know that the energy sector which exists today is the biggest cause of greenhouse gases. Additionally, we should also look at the price of fossil fuel, because we should not forget that the challenge of fossil fuel prices is still ahead of us. I hope that we will face this later rather than sooner, but it is definitely part of anticipation of the strategy.
As for the orientation, I would expect Parliament to take account of the Green Paper on EU development policy, where we make access to renewable energy in developing countries one of the central pillars of the new EU development policy. If we do not take this pioneering step, we cannot easily expect to convince the World Bank and others that we should be focusing investment on renewable energy. I believe that we are capable of managing the scale of investment in renewable energy. We just need to have courage. It is true that it requires a lot of financial means today, but any energy strategy would require quite a lot of investment. So, if I see anticipation of the prices, I would always argue that renewable energy is definitely the one that should be at the heart of any energy policy in any part of the world.
Our knowledge of renewable technologies today gives a good guarantee that we really could make a change in these countries. I also believe that there is a lot of untapped potential. I know that hydropower, for example, is a rather challenging source of energy from all points of view but, provided environmental sustainability analysis is being done, I believe that most countries also have a fantastic untapped potential in hydropower, which gives additional arguments that the scale – the Inga Dam, for example – is huge.
At the beginning, we need to lead by example. If the EU is able and you discuss a report on the EU development policy’s Green Paper, Parliament should strongly support driving EU development policy in this direction. We will have a better argument for convincing the World Bank to actually follow this drive and be more focused on investments in the coal-fired power station. The Bank has now established six criteria as general guidelines for future coal investment. The World Bank, under the leadership of Bob Zoellick, is extremely active in the debate, so it would seem that the World Bank is an asset and not something that we should be afraid of. It is our ally but we really need to provide European leadership on this issue and in the energy sector for the developing world.
I would also like to address the issue of the EIB, because it was in the question. The Cotonou Agreement is the legislative basis for EIB activity for an amount of EUR 3.1 billion to ACP countries. A major instrument in this framework is the ACP Investment Facility. The facility finances infrastructure and climate friendly energy projects. As far as the energy sector is concerned, no projects exist in the area of fossil fuels. The general policy is very clear – to fund climate friendly energy projects based on wind, hydraulic or solar energy.
In the context of the mid-term review of the EIB External Mandate – covering pre-accession, neighbourhood and partner countries, Asia, Latin America and South Africa – a proposal has been put forward by the Commission to activate an additional EUR 2 billion mandate for 2011-2013 to support EIB financing operations in the field of climate change mitigation and adaptation across all regions. The proposal stresses that the EIB’s own rules and procedures shall include the necessary provisions to ensure that only projects that are economically, financially, environmentally and socially sustainable are supported under the mandate."@en1
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