EU must cease use of oil for transport sector

23-03-06

The EU must wean its transport sector off oil entirely within a generation, the European parliament's environment committee said. In a non-legislative resolution on the European commission's energy efficiency green paper MEPs said the move was essential to ensure the EU becomes the world's most energy efficient economic block by 2020.
"The EU's energy strategy should concentrate initially on the total substitution of fossil fuel use in the transport sector by 2030," says the resolution.

The demand will be forwarded to the parliament's energy committee, which is coordinating the assembly's position on the green paper, and then voted on by its plenary session.
Among the measures proposed are "early introduction of an 'energy consumption per km' label" giving consumers a more informed choice between modes of transport. The committee also said the commission's target of a 20 % cut in energy use by 2020 should be strengthened because high oil prices meant more cost-effective potential for energy savings.

In other committee business, MEPs nodded through changes to import quotas for HCFCs in the EU's ten newest member states, and voted their second reading position on the proposed Inspire spatial information system. Both files now go for a plenary vote.
Meanwhile at a plenary session, the full parliament urged EU heads of government gathering in Brussels for their spring summit to redouble efforts to meet existing renewable energy generation targets and to set "ambitious" follow-on targets once they expire in 2010.

 

 

Source: Environmental Data Service