The European Commission has launched an initiative to promote the development of low-carbon technology.
The Commission has proposed a twin-track approach to developing green technology — stronger research, and the creation of business opportunities in those technologies. Details of the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan were revealed on Thursday.
"Reinforced research has to lower costs and improve performance [of green tech]," stated the Towards a Low Carbon Future document. "Proactive support measures are to create business opportunities, stimulate market development and address the non-technological barriers that discourage innovation and the market deployment of efficient and low-carbon technologies."
An over-reliance on readily available fossil fuels has tempered the interest for innovation and investment in new energy technologies, and led to the lack of a short-term business case for investment in more expensive, ecologically friendly technology, said the Commission.
The Commission has set a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, and to ensure 20 percent of renewable energy sources in the "EU energy mix". It also plans to reduce EU global primary energy use by 20 percent by 2020.
To meet the targets, the challenges the Commission has set itself are to make biofuels competitive alternatives to fossil fuels; enable CO2 capture, transport and storage; double the power-generation capacity of the largest wind farms, with an emphasis on offshore; demonstrate commercial readiness of large-scale solar power; enable a single, smart European electricity grid able to accommodate the integration of renewable and decentralised energy sources; bring more efficient energy conversion to mass market and end-user devices; and maintain the usage of nuclear technologies, together with long-term radioactive waste management.
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Carbon Capture - simply putting off today what others will have solve tomorrow
The World Innovation Foundation is the voice of the world's 'INDEPENDENT' scientific community (3,500 eminent scientists, engineers and technologists and counting). It is not dictated too by governments or national academies of science. This independence of mind away from the control of governments and multi-national financially supported entities, gives the WIF the ability to tell the truth.
Therefore with regard to just one possible aspect of trying to reduce the effects of global warming, that of carbon capture, what we are doing here is basically putting off as usual, problems that our future generations will have to solve. Therefore carbon capture is just putting off the inevitable and where the big multinationals will make literally billions out of a regime of continuation and where no real solutions are found. Indeed, if this vast amount of carbon leaches out of the ground or oceans in the future, we might as well say goodbye to human life on this planet. Therefore politicians are presently dabbling with humankind's very existence.
What in essence should be happening is that governments around the world should be investing in the development of a centralised global centre that solves the world's immense problems, not putting them off for others to solve at a later date. We as independent scientific minds have been telling governments for a decade now to develop the concept of the ORE-STEM complex with its 1000 plus incubator centres around the world. Simply, this mechanism harnesses the world's creative thinking and siphons it into this huge centre to solve the biggest problems that confronts humankind and possibly save it from extinction. It is common sense in reality, as only a mechanism large enough to stop the worst effects of global warming and provide the necessary answers to famine, supporting the population explosion (now predicted to be a minimum of 10 billion by 2050 and possibly even 12 billion) and alternative energy sources (new discoveries) et al. Therefore the world has to force forward what the independent scientific community is saying, for if not, we certainly run the greatest risk of all, the extinction of the human experience itself.
Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation
Bern, Switzerland