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TIME EUROPE September 18, 2000, Vol. 156 No. 12 The Energy Crunch Soaring fuel prices set off protests and raise questions about Europe's sources of power By THOMAS SANCTON Paris Not since the early 1970s have skyrocketing oil prices caused such havoc. As the price of Brent crude reached a 10-year high of $34 per barrel, angry French truckers and farmers blocked more than 100 oil depots and put a chokehold on much of the nation's fuel supply. Service stations around the country were forced to put up "empty" signs, flights were canceled or rerouted at some airports, and fuel had to be requisitioned for essential services. Taxi and ambulance drivers snarled traffic with go-slow protests and boatmen in Paris jammed the Seine. By the end of the week, similar demonstrations had spread to Belgium, Britain, Italy and Spain.
The Socialist-led government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin had unwittingly encouraged the latest protests by offering a generous compensation package to striking fisherman the week before. But this time, after truckers refused a government offer of a 15% cut in the tax on diesel, Jospin held firm and announced that there would be "no more negotiations." The defiant drivers reinforced their action, though there were signs over the weekend that both truckers and farmers were slowly beginning to lift some of the barricades. With oil prices causing deep concern throughout the industrialized world, all eyes were on Sunday's meeting of opec oil ministers in Vienna. Prices eased slightly at week's end when Saudi Arabia's oil minister said he expected the cartel to increase production from 500-700,000 barrels per day. But with winter fast approaching in Europe and North America, and existing oil stocks at low levels, most analysts expected prices to remain high at least until the end of the year. And even if the cost of crude does settle down, many experts predicted a delayed-action slowdown of the world economy. The flareup of oil prices has had another, potentially more significant effect: it suddenly put the subject of energy back on the front burner. The crisis was a sobering reminder of the volatility of oil prices, the exhaustibility of fossil fuels and the urgent need for long-range thinking about stable, reliable, non-polluting energy sources — not just for trucks, cars and boats, but for the electrical power that is the lifeblood of a modern industrial economy. In France, the latest oil shock seemed to underscore the wisdom of relying heavily on nuclear power. "I am very happy that nuclear energy provides 75% of our electricity at a time when the cost of gasoline has doubled," Industry Minister Christian Pierret said last week. But France, typically, is the odd man out in a post-Chernobyl Europe that is steadily turning away from nuclear power. Last June, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced an accord that would phase out virtually all of the country's atomic plants by 2021. The decision was based on a 1998 election deal between Schröder's Social Democrats and their Green coalition partners. Yet it had far-reaching implications, not only for Germany but for most of its European neighbors as well. In promising to close down the 19 reactors that currently supply 35% of its energy needs, Germany joined Italy, Austria and Sweden in formally renouncing nuclear power. Most of Germany's other European Union partners have decided not to build new nuclear facilities when the current crop of reactors goes off-line over the next two decades. France alone remains firmly wedded to atomic energy. Western Europe's energy future now looks increasingly non-nuclear. The problem is that there is no easy, affordable and environmentally sound way to replace the atomic plants that currently generate 23% of the E.U.'s electric power. With renewable sources like wind, water and solar energy limited to a fairly marginal role in most countries for the foreseeable future, the only large-scale alternatives are oil, gas and coal, all of which produce carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming. Yet the E.U. is committed by the 1997 Kyoto accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8% from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012 — a goal that will be impossible to meet if there is a massive move from nuclear to fossil fuels. But while fossil fuels produce CO2, nuclear reactors generate large amounts of radioactive waste that can remain potentially lethal for hundreds of years. Current methods of reprocessing and stockpiling are no more than stopgap solutions, pending the development of some now-hypothetical technology that could actually get rid of the deadly detritus (click here for more). Schröder's decision was based more on political horsetrading than serious energy policy. The government-industry accord of June 14 put a limit of 32 years on the working life of each of its 19 nuclear power stations. That means that the first plant should go off-line in 2002 and the last one around 2021. To meet energy needs once the nukes shut down, the government plans a three-pronged strategy calling for energy conservation, more use of renewable sources and the replacement of coal-burning plants (currently 51% of output) with modern gas-powered facilities that produce less than half as much CO2. Meanwhile, the government is cutting off its subsidies for the European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR), the next generation of nuclear power facilities that Germany's Siemens AG is jointly developing with France's Framatome. But the two companies vowed to continue working on the epr and in July announced the merging of their nuclear activities into a new company, Framatome ANP. Though the German phaseout deprives the new joint venture of a major customer for the epr, Siemens chief executive Heinrich von Pierer is confident the decision will be reversed. "The government's current policy will not be the last word about nuclear energy in Germany," he says. "There is no convincing answer to the question of how the electricity from nuclear power plants can be substituted." MORE >> PAGE 1 | 2 | 3 TIME Europe home More stories from TIME Europe and related links E-mail us at mail@timeatlantic.com |
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