A European Pickens Plan?

November 13, 2008

Not exactly, but the European Commission did release a comprehensive energy plan that is aimed at making Europe’s energy policy “secure, sustainable, and competitive.”  Europe, which gets almost half of its gas, a third of its oil, and a quarter of its coal from Russia, is even more vulnerable to energy disruptions from geopolitical events than the United States.  (Our biggest direct suppliers are Canada and Mexico.)

The EC’s energy plan aims to address this dependency on Russian energy, as well as environmental concerns.

The plan identified two energy projects in particular that are “absolute priorities.”  These includ connecting the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to the European power grid (since they are currently almost completely dependent on Russian electricity), and moving forward with the “southern gas corridor” which will transport natural gas from the Caspian basin to Europe, while bypassing Russia and Iran.

Additionally, the plan calls for a major upgrade to Europe’s transmission systems, in order to create a “supergrid” that would incorporate wind farms in the North Sea and solar plants in the Mediterranean, as well as widespread increases in efficiency standards.  The EC anticipates overall costs will be 2 trillion Euros by 2030.   

Photo credit.

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Comments

One Comment on A European Pickens Plan?

  1. SeriousGeorge on Thu, 13th Nov 2008 10:50 am
  2. That link to the Inhabitat article above has some amazing pics/diagrams of offshore windmills.

    [Reply]

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