European Student Think Tank

Ger­many has been the global front-runner in terms of “green­ing” its eco­nomy. After the nuclear-accident in Fukushima in 2011, the coun­try decided to aban­don nuc­lear energy com­pletely and rely on renew­able energy. What seemed like a bold and determ­ined move might endanger the European energy sup­ply, espe­cially since the European sovereign-debt crisis has become the major focus of EU lead­ers actions. How­ever, every crisis offers an opportunity..

It seemed that Nabucco might actu­ally win the pipeline race in the Caspian basin, but the group of con­test­ants has grown even big­ger with the addi­tion of BP’s South East European Pipeline. Could this mean the end of Nabucco and is it a reason for concern?

Energy effi­ciency is hot. Lots of atten­tion dur­ing last week’s Sus­tain­able Energy Week and the recently released Energy Effi­ciency Plan has fuelled the fire. The European Com­mis­sion and NGOs are eager to pro­mote large scale energy sav­ings to reach the EU’s cli­mate and energy goals. But what is actu­ally energy effi­ciency and why is it so pop­u­lar? It has proven very tricky to reg­u­late and notori­ously dif­fi­cult to meas­ure. Some even argue that energy effi­ciency meas­ures actu­ally increase our energy usage.