Call for Europe to lift nuclear capacity.
For Personal Use Only
Europe needs to increase substantially its nuclear power capacity to relieve its overdependence on gas, the chief executive of Edison has warned.
Umberto Quadrino, head of Italy’s second-largest utility, said there was serious trouble looming in European power supply.
“If you look at the supply of gas to Europe over the next 15 years, we have to be scared,” he told the Financial Times.
Italy has had a ban on nuclear power generation since its population voted in a referendum to close the country’s last operating reactors in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It is the only member of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations without nuclear power and the world’s largest net importer of electricity, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Mr Quadrino’s comments add to calls from the energy sector to take action to resolve Europe’s gas requirements. Paolo Scaroni, chief executive of Eni, Italy’s largest oil company, said last month that Europe was “sleepwalking” into a “staggering” dependence on imported gas.
Mr Quadrino said Europe would need to double its gas imports between now and 2020 as its own production tailed off and demand escalated. Meanwhile, the extra supplies of gas had to come, he said, from “troublesome countries” such as Iran, Iraq and Turkmenistan.
“A nuclear programme at a European level has to be taken into consideration,” Mr Quadrino said. He said only France was expanding its nuclear capacity.
Mr Quadrino said alternative energy sources such as wind or hydroelectric power would grow, but were unlikely to increase their current share of supply from about 20 per cent. More reliance on coal would create problems for countries trying to comply with targets on lower carbon dioxide emissions.
Filed by Catherine Tsalikis under Energy and Nuclear Safety