Brussels, 10/12/2010 (Agence Europe) - The ninth annual conference of the Science and Technology Options Assessment service of the European Parliament (STOA), which was held in Brussels on 8 December, examined the question of how sciences, technologies and the economy can give Europe an oil-free future. Although several options are on the table, such as electric cars with rechargeable batteries and replacing oil with methanol, all of those who took part, MEPs and experts alike, agreed that all solutions need to be examined carefully.
Opening the session, the chairman of STOA, the Austrian Paul Rübig (EPP), stressed the importance of stepping up efforts to improve energy efficiency, revisiting solutions which aim to replace fossil fuels, and moving towards eco-efficient transport, sustainable energy sources and a social network which places the emphasis on ethics and an exchange of best practice between citizens. His vice president, Germany's Silvana Koch-Mehrin (ALDE), highlighted the major potential gains to be had from moving away from conventional vehicles to use electric cars instead. Their colleague, the president of the committee on the internal market, Malcolm Harbour of the UK (ECR), called for an in-depth study to be carried out into the use of fossil fuels and alternative solutions under consideration in the member states, which should exchange information and best practice in this area, but also do more to support new technologies through public procurement.
Shai Agassi, the director general of Better Place, which will next year take over the management of the battery recharging and exchange station networks in Israel and Denmark, is convinced that Europe will adopt the electric car in less than 10 years, due to the ongoing increase in fuel prices, and that each new generation of battery is less expensive and more efficient than the one before. In Agassi's view, the creation of recharging networks and battery exchange stations will offer a sustainable solution to the problem of low levels of autonomy for electric vehicles. Laying emphasis on the relatively low cost for a country to set a network of this kind in place compared to its fuel expenditure for just six days, Agassi urged the political decision-makers to speed up transition, in order to remain ahead of China.
Paul Crutzen, the 1995 winner of the Nobel prize for chemistry and lecturer at the Max Planck Institute, drew up a list of the consequences of human development in the 20th century (fourfold increase in the population, tenfold increase of urban areas, 40-fold increase in industrial production and 16-fold increase in energy consumption) on gas emissions. Of these emissions, those caused by man are twice as high as natural emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2), and those due to the greenhouse effect have also increased sharply, by 40% in the case of carbon dioxide (CO2) and by more than 100% for methane (CH4). “With the Industrial Revolution, the human species entered into a new geological phase, the anthropocene, and our action affects the climate clearly and deliberately”, said Crutzen, who recommends a 40% reduction in emissions of CO2 and a reduction of between 70 and 80% in emissions of protoxides, by saving energy and using renewables.
The 1994 winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry, George Oláh, a professor at the University of Southern California, vaunted the merits of saving methanol as a possible alternative to dependency on oil, natural gas and coal. His solution is based on capturing CO2 produced by burning these hydrocarbons and using it to transform methane into methanol, a multiple-use fuel which could replace petrol and diesel. Although the industrial production of methanol using hydrocarbons consumes large amounts of energy, certain countries such as China, India and Indonesia are opting for this solution, as they have major coal reserves. Professor Oláh also recommended that the European political decision-makers improve the use of sources of geothermal energy and electricity outside peak hours for the functioning of methanol production units, in the model of the experimental site piloted in Iceland in 2009. (E.H./transl.fl)