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16.07.2012 11:28

EU Energy Chief Oettinger Warns of Deindustrialisation

Europe should make another permanent goal a 20 percent industrial contribution to gross domestic product by 2020, energy commssioner Oettinger said

AUTHOR: publics.bg

© European Commission

Policies governing the European Union's drive towards a low- carbon economy should not lose sight of the need to retain the bloc's industrial base, Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said in a newspaper column on Monday.

"Europe should think about adding a fourth goal to the three 20-20-20 energy-related ones up to the year 2020," Oettinger wrote in the business daily Handelsblatt, as reported by Reuters.

The bloc's goals are a planned 20 percent hike in energy efficiency, a 20 percent cut in CO2 emissions and reaching a 20 percent share of renewables in energy usage by 2020.

"(Europe) ... should make (another) permanent goal a 20 percent industrial contribution to gross domestic product (by 2020)," Oettinger said.

This share had sunk to 18 percent in 2010 from around 22 percent in 2000. "We need a strategy for the re-industrialisation of Europe," he said.

Oettinger said Europe was too dependent on energy imports - its main natural gas supplier is Russia and its oil comes mainly from the Middle East - and therefore had to ensure efficient energy production and usage, to help stand up to competitors such as the United States where gas prices have plummeted.

Electricity would become the EU's main energy benchmark as it would expand its share in fuelling transport, Oettinger said, adding Europe needed a policy "that considered that security of supply and affordability of power are a decisive location factor in the global context," he wrote.