Proceedings of the Workshop on the "Energy Roadmap 2050 : EU External Policies for Future Energy Security"

The workshop “Energy Roadmap 2050: EU External policies for future energy security”, organised by the Policy Department of DG External Policies for the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), took place on November 5th, 2012 in the European Parliament. It aimed at facilitating an exchange of views about the energetic context and the future perspectives of the global market and European energy security. The participants discussed the parameters of the international energetic scene: the rise of shale gas exploitation and its economic, ecological and geopolitical impacts; the development of the European internal market rules; the future negotiations on climate change. The EU’s energetic future was obviously the main topic and was treated through the analysis of the three pillars of energy policy: security of supply, competitive market conditions and sustainability. The accent was put on the consequences of the US’s growing independency on oil and gas due to the exploitation of shale gas deposits. This recent development is likely to have huge mid-term repercussions on global oil, coal and gas prices and to widen the competitiveness gap between the US and Europe. The climate change issue and the possibility to create the conditions for a new international agreement were discussed, as well as the future perspectives of renewable energy development. The proficiency of the European Trading Scheme and the research on energy efficiency and carbon capture storage technology were debated. The speakers also insisted on the fact that the full implementation of internal market rules would have a crucial influence on the construction process of the European energy policy. They pointed out the need to strengthen and extend these norms through the development of the European Energy Community Treaty. Regarding the European energy security, the partnership with Russia, the main supplier of many EU member states, was stressed by the speakers, even though one of the main objecti