Europe takes a bleak look at its energy future PETER COOK Friday, December 1, 2000 BRUSSELS -- Was it courage or chance that led the European Commission to come up with a study of future energy needs that mentioned nuclear power just four days after its emissaries had spurned a compromise with the United States and Canada on global warming? The answer is, of course, chance. Nonetheless, the launch from out of the Brussels bureaucracy of a Green Paper on a Future European Energy Strategy on Wednesday looked bizarre when measured against the events of last Saturday. Then, at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in The Hague, Europe's negotiating team, led by France's Environment Minister Dominique Voynet, had decided the North Americans must not be allowed to trade emissions or count their forests as carbon sinks -- even though the use of both would be limited. Better no deal at all than an impure one. In deciding this way, however impracticably, Madame Voynet and the ministers supporting her from Denmark and Finland earned the heartfelt thanks of environmental protesters who had laid siege to the conference for two weeks. But that may not last -- at least insofar as the purity of Brussels policy-making is concerned. For, in the lexicon of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, there is only one thing more hideous than subordinating curbs on greenhouse gas emissions to economic reality and that is the presence anywhere of nuclear power. This particular environmentalist pecking order is actually written into Europe's interpretation of the Kyoto protocol on global warming. Within the continent's quota for cleaning up the atmosphere by the year 2010, Sweden has been given special consideration. It alone is allowed to emit more greenhouse gases and make the air dirtier. Why? Because -- in the eyes of the environmental movement -- Stockholm is promising to be even more virtuous by closing a perfectly efficient nuclear reactor at Barseback long before the end of its natural life. That makes nuclear power enemy No. 1, greenhouse gas emissions enemy No. 2. When Barseback is closed, the Swedes will rely on power from antiquated, coal-fired plants in Denmark. Europe has several Green parties in power in Socialist-led coalitions. So the Swedish example is not unique. Last summer, Germany's ruling Socialist-Green coalition decided after a long angry debate that it would phase out all nuclear power, though it put a 32-year time limit on doing it (hence the anger of the Greens). Given that this is the politics of nuclear power, it is a sign of desperation that Brussels cannot avoid the subject when talking about the future. Put simply, Europe cannot meet its Kyoto targets and avoid overreliance on oil from the Mideast and gas from Russia unless it drastically cuts energy use and considers keeping nuclear power. Renewable energy provides just 6 per cent of Europe's needs now and is unlikely to provide more than 10 per cent in 2030. If use of nuclear power -- which now provides 30 per cent of electricity and avoids the EU pumping 300-million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere -- also declines, reliance on fossil fuels from risky places will climb sharply. In 1973 when the first oil crisis hit, Europe imported 60 per cent of its energy needs. That has come down to 50 per cent, but by 2030 it will be 70 per cent. If nothing changes before then, says Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio, Europe will be a Gulliver tied down and made helpless by its reliance on foreign energy. In the late 1990s, European governments thought they had a solution: levying higher and higher taxes on the use of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions while spending more on public transit and renewable energy. That strategy is now in tatters. Fuel tax protesters have managed to get energy taxes lowered, liberalization of electricity and gas industries has cut prices and raised consumption, and public transit such as rail networks is in such bad shape in places like Britain that more cars are on the road than ever before. Add in the campaign to phase out nuclear power and Europe is moving toward a greater use of fossil fuels and less use of a clean alternative. If the future is to be different, a first task will be to educate politicians and environmentalists in the limits of what the public will accept when it comes to curbing energy use and cleaning the atmosphere. The absolute solutions they favour don't seem to work. Compromises may do better.