Fighting talk.(Features)

After years of frustration, the European Commission is finally preparing to force liberalisation on the energy market . The Utility Week team reports

At the launch last Wednesday of its Energy Policy for Europe, the European Commission declared: "The days of cheap energy for Europe seem to be over."

The Commission admitted that its previous attempts to create a competitive energy market had failed. To address this, it said it would force energy companies to unbundle their networks from the rest of their activities and strengthen energy regulation at the level of the "highest, not the lowest" common denominator in the European Union.

But the Commission was adamant that the flipside of its strategy - plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent by 2020 and to reduce primary energy use by 20 per cent by 2020 - were more than an environmental sideshow. Europe's dependence on imported hydrocarbons would "jump" from 50 per cent of total energy consumption today to 65 per cent by 2030, the Commission said. The "intense" pressure on global energy resources exposed Europe to price volatility and attendant political and economic risk. Low carbon technologies already turn over [euro]20 billion annually in Europe, the Commission pointed out, and transforming Europe into a low carbon economy would maintain the bloc as ...