A new EU-US Energy Council has been launched in Washington to provide a new framework for deepening the transatlantic dialogue on strategic energy issues. The strategic issues include security of supply or policies to move towards low carbon energy sources while strengthening the ongoing scientific collaboration on energy technologies. With the Energy Council the European Union and the US aim to deepen the bilateral energy cooperation on global energy security, sustainability and climate change.
“The Energy Council is a timely initiative in the context of growing global concerns on energy security and the important role that the energy sector has in climate change. Elevating these discussions between us to a political level underscores the importance we both attach to this area of our relationship”, said Commissioner Piebalgs.
“I want to see energy security and climate change centre stage in all our partnerships around the world, and it is the right moment to step up our cooperation with the US. As two of the greatest consumers of energy, we have a responsibility to work together to find solutions to some of the most challenging questions of our day”, said External Relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner
Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik added “Scientific cooperation to foster development of low carbon energy technologies will be a key pillar of this new EU-US Energy Council. The inclusion of research in this bilateral cooperation is also a political recognition of the importance of science to address our common challenges.”
The European Representatives in the Energy Council will be the EU Commissioners for External Relations, for Energy, and for Science and Research, as well as the EU Presidency. Their counterparts on the US side will be the Secretaries of State and of Energy. It will meet annually, alternately in the EU and US, and report to the EU-US Summit.
The work of the Council will be structured through working groups of senior officials from both sides that will focus on three specific areas: Energy Policies, Global Energy Security and Global Markets, and Energy Technologies Research Cooperation.
The EU and the US agreed to develop strategic cooperation on energy and energy security, presented in a joint declaration at the EU-US Vienna Presidential Summit on June 21, 2006. The establishment of the EU-US Energy Council moves this bilateral energy cooperation up a gear, on the basis of more structured bilateral cooperation.
Examples of energy cooperation between the EU and the US to date include the initialling of a new Energy Star EU-US Agreement on the coordination of energy-efficient labelling programmes for office equipment, and cooperation on the development of energy technologies such as hydrogen or the ITER project for nuclear fusion.