Baltic Sea: Developing a Regional Cooperation for Renewables in the Electricity Sector
Heinrich Boell Foundation | June 2011
Europe has the potential to generate all of its electricity from renewable
energy sources if it combines its diverse natural potentials. The Heinrich Böll
Foundation has strongly promoted such a European approach in the past years. In
our study on a European
Community for Renewable Energy (ERENE), published in 2008, we presented a
concept how 100 % renewables in the EU are possible by the year 2050 if the EU
member states work together. Since then, a number of studies have confirmed the
feasibility of our findings. The EU is already on its way to changing the
production of its electricity, and to investing more into renewable energy.
Business and politics have in the last years begun to initiate large scale
European cooperation projects, most notably Desertec and the North Sea Grid
Initiative.
While our overall objective remains that all member states of the European
Union should combine their potential, these examples show that there will
probably be regional approaches as a starting point. In this paper we therefore
take a closer look at a region that could be a pioneer for regional cooperation
in the EU: the Baltic Sea Region. As the first region with a European Union
regional cooperation initiative - the EU Baltic Sea initiative - and with a
long-lasting tradition of cooperation, this region could play an essential role
in showing the EU the way forward by sharing their large potential of diverse
renewable energy sources.
We have asked Mats Abrahamsson from the think-tank
factwise in Stockholm to examine the already existing cooperation mechanisms in
the Baltic Sea region, to analyze how well they function and how they could be
developed further to fully use the regional renewable energy potential. We hope
that with this paper we can contribute to the discussions on how regional
cooperation can help pave the way for a new European energy system based on 100
% renewables.
Boell Foundation: "Baltic Sea: Developing a Regional Cooperation for
Renewables in the Electricity Sector" Download the
publication PDF
