What are the Energy policies of the EU?
Mission
The EU's current emphasis is: security of energy supply, focusing on ways to reduce demand while ensuring diversification of producer and transit routes for the supply of those energy sources that need to be imported; promoting the development and use of alternative sources of energy; increasing the efficient use of energy.
Activities
This implies an ambitious move toward energy production that includes wind and biomass, hydro-generated and solar power and biofuels from organic matter. The next step would be to become a hydrogen economy: a European Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Platform project is drafting a blueprint for such a transition.
Additionally, the EU is de-regulating the electricity and gas sectors through legislation that has already opened up the markets to all business consumers, with this benefit extended to all consumers as of mid-2007.
Early in 2007 the European Union (EU) proposed a new energy policy as a first resolute step towards becoming a low-energy economy, whilst making the energy we do consume more secure, competitive and sustainable. A common policy is the most effective way to tackle today's energy challenges, which are shared by all Member States. The policy puts energy back at the heart of EU action, the position it occupied when the European venture first got under way with the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC Treaty, 1951) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom Treaty, 1957). The aims of the policy are supported by market-based tools (mainly taxes, subsidies and the CO2 emissions trading scheme), by developing energy technologies (especially technologies for energy efficiency and renewable or low-carbon energy) and by Community financial instruments.