Brussels, 10/11/2005 (Agence Europe) - Leaders of industry and political representatives (including about thirty ministers) of about one hundred countries took part on 7 and 8 November in an International Renewable Energy Conference in Beijing sponsored by the German government, the European Commission and the UN, as a follow-up to the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002) and the Bonn Conference of 2004 on renewable energy. At this conference, the Chinese Vice-minister of Development and Reform, Zhang Guobao, announced that China will be spending close to 180 billion dollars between now and 2020 in order to increase renewable energy from 7% to 15% in its total energy consumption. “Renewable energy, including solar energy, wind power and hydraulic energy, will contribute to better energy security for China and will allow it to make substantial increases in economic areas as well as in its move to conserve the environment and fight poverty,” he said. The European Commissioner for the Environment, Stavros Dimas, was extremely pleased with China's promise of a lasting increase in the areas of energy and the environment. He stressed how important it is for China to reduce its dependence on oil, offsetting the global energy shortage. As China is expected to surpass the United States in the quantity of its emissions of greenhouse gases in a few years' time, Mr Dimas declared himself absolutely convinced that the situation is not hopeless, since the Chinese government has decided to take the appropriate steps to improve the situation, and has already put in place measures that have been effective in improving it. In particular, he expressed pleasure in the fact that China has instructed a number of factories to reduce their emissions of sulphur dioxide by 46% and that Beijing has shown a great deal of interest in wind power, installing wind turbines both along the coast and inland. A report published on the same day by the China Renewable Energy Industries, the European Wind Energy Industry and Greenpeace entitled “Windforce 12 in China” predicts that wind energy could represent close to 12% of the energy produced in China by 2020, thus becoming the second largest source of electricity production in the country, ahead of hydroelectricity but still behind coal-fired electricity generation.
As far as the European Union is concerned, Mr Dimas gave his support to the aim of 25% of total energy consumption being green energy by 2020, as suggested by the Parliament in its Resolution of 3 October 2005. (EUROPE 9040). Mr. Dimas said “considering climate change, issues of security of supply, and energy price volatility, I think the European Union should indeed seriously consider adopting this ambitious target” but at the same time made it clear that “nevertheless, the jury is still out and the Commission will report its findings early next year” (The EU has for the moment fixed an indicative but not binding objective of 12%). “Six per cent of the energy and 12% of the electricity we consume today in the European Union already comes from renewable sources”, Mr. Dimas recalled, before continuing: “If compared to the situation only a few years ago when the share of renewable energy was marginal, we could say that the European Union's approach works and (…) it is delivering substantial and sound economic and environmental results”. Mr. Dimas nevertheless recalled that, in its 2004 report, the Commission stated that the majority of Member States ran the risk of not being able to achieve their national targets unless they changed their policies, especially in connection with biomass, which has until now been under-exploited. In order to help Member States achieve these targets, the Commission is above all planning the adoption at the end of November of a Biomass Action Plan including ideas on heating of renewable origin; as well as a report on plans for the support of renewable energy development, which promotes the efficiency of German and Spanish feed-in-tariff systems. Mr Dimas also emphasised the need, alongside the development of renewable energy, to promote greater energy efficiency in order to avoid the positive effects of the development of green energy being cancelled out by an uncontrolled demand for energy. In this connection, the Commission wants to establish a plan of action with measures (particularly in the transport, housing and industry sectors) which will allow energy consumption to be reduced to the level of 20% by 2020.
On the subject of international co-operation, Stavros Dimas recalled the important role played by the Union in encouraging the deployment of technology connected with renewable energy, and in its dialogue with developing countries, notably through the European Energy Initiative (which has created the European Union Energy Facility, with a budget of EUR 200 million) and the intergovernmental platform launched in 2002, the Johannesburg Renewable Energy Coalition (JREC).
The European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) welcomes in a press release the “clear signal” given by the Beijing Conference for a deeper commitment to hastening renewable energy development. Nevertheless, EREC regrets that support for the fixing of binding targets is still insufficient.