Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
alliance-building priorities, Areva is spending 3 billion to increase uranium supplies
from Canada, Kazakhstan, Niger and Namibia. The Scottish administration has
turned to Middle East sovereign wealth funds for renewables investment: Masdar, a
renewable energy company based in Abu Dhabi, plans to spend millions in clean
energy projects in Scotland after signing an agreement with the Scottish govern-
ment. The British and German foreign ministers launched a joint initiative in 2011
to encourage Russia to adopt
s
Energy
Roadmap 2050
called for a partnership with Russia and Ukraine especially on
biomass.
46
Dutch
rmer plans on energy e
ciency. The EU
'
rm Gasunie has signed a deal with Gazprom to import biomass
energy.
Other aspects of policy point to a more defensive form of industrial mercantilism,
however. Critics charge that European governments seem not to recognise that the
strategic need to share new technologies is more important than the pro
ts of a small
number of private companies.
47
The EU has backed water privatisation schemes in
developing states, with French and German companies in particular being successful
in winning control of water resources. This has moved the Union away from sup-
port for the notion that access to water is a fundamental and top-priority human
right, and towards a more geo-economic notion of resource control. One of the
rst
petitions launched under the EU
s Initiative aimed to
roll back this trend. In similar vein, most member states have rejected the Commis-
sion
'
s new 2013 European Citizen
'
s push to limit biofuels on food security grounds, as governments see these as an
easy way to meet more immediate emissions targets. Only the UK, Denmark, the
Netherlands and Belgium have supported the Commission
'
s stricter line on biofuels,
for example seeking to report on how these add, rather than save, further emissions.
Most states have launched strategies to gain more geo-economic control over biofuel
sources.
48
The Commission
'
s March 2013 green paper strikes a more geo-economic
note in cautioning that the EU should no longer allow instruments like the Clean
Development Mechanism to have European funds subsidise renewable competitors
in rising powers.
49
As China has increasingly insisted on green technology transfer in its bilateral
trade and investment deals with European countries so the latter have sought
tougher reciprocity. A 2011 EU trade initiative on reciprocity enshrined this shift
in position. China
'
s move into Greenland has been one factor in a rare earths dis-
pute with the EU. While the EU and China are cooperating much more together
on joint green technology projects and China is developing a cap-and-trade
scheme modelled on the ETS, the EU and its member states have opened a
number of cases against China
'
s domestic support for various renewable projects.
One former European climate minister argues that the EU must move much
further in this direction, matching China in terms of harder-edged mercantilistic
self-interest in green technology strategies. One expert points to the July 2013
'
