Address by Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek at the 9th annual Czech Republic Energy Congress, 10 March 2009
Esteemed fellow panelists, esteemed Martin Pecina, esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,
Firstly, I'm used to saying what I want, and I will not let myself be bound to where the people who invited me to those conferences are pressing me to go. Secondly, I am far from speaking my opinions; I've learned not to do that as the chairman of the Council of the European Union. My colleagues from the energy sector, where I was active for a number of years, know my opinions. They are not far from what Martin Pecina said, but nevertheless, it's a little more complicated. Even under communism, the communists in the countryside went to church; they couldn't afford not to go. So it is, of course, with religion as well, and I agree with that. My approach to the entire issue has been set by the fact that my entire life I've moved somewhere on the interface of economics, the environment and energy, and that problem has to be solved within that triangle. That problem cannot be solved only from an environmental perspective, it cannot be solved only from an energy perspective, and it is nonsense to resolve it uneconomically. That means, in my conception, what is economical must also be environmental, and never vice versa. So that is the approach of a person who has dealt with the given issue his entire professional life, before his mundane political life.
I have thought quite a bit about how to get beyond the topic of the climate, beyond that first panel, to try to orient myself a bit wider, beyond the issue of energy, and I will do so. In the entire issue of the climate, I will say only that I think it is necessary to hand over the country at least in the same state - if not better - than how I received it. Even I think it is necessary to create an environment for life. Even I think it's necessary to clean up after oneself. I think it is a normal, pragmatic political approach, and each of us is searching for the means and tools to achieve this. The current financial crisis and its economic impacts will partially resolve the problem of consumption. I think that such a decline in demand and such a decline in production will destroy all the prognoses and predictions of consumption growth, and we will be basing things on different numbers. So certain problems have resolved themselves.
This is also because people have forgotten a certain amount of caution, and have forgotten that they are supposed to consume only what they create, and that the entire globalised world lived off an artificially-created financial bubble. To use a phrase from the era of Gründer capitalism in the 1990s, this what what was called "oak money," which circulated around and around, and all the derivative trades caused us to live beyond our means, that we consumed more than was necessary and in this regard we got a good slap in the face. And this was both in economics and, of course, eventually in energy. I will instead discuss what we are looking at today with a projection on to the Czech environment.
It's only been in the last period, the last half-years, starting maybe with the German presidency, through the previous French presidency, ours and the upcoming Swedish presidency, that energy has been a topic of discussion - whether in climatological or climatic form, or in other forms of energy - far more than previous presidencies. The reason is quite clear. The dependence of the European Union and EU countries on imports is fatal. Over time it will increase, and if we don't want to make a fundamental strategic, geopolitical mistake, then we must react. The European Union reaction is a bit hysterical and of course is going in the wrong direction, but I, as a person who has studied linear and non-linear and impulse regulations, I believe that in the end, the system will become static, the cycles will even out and we will walk in the right direction.
That right direction, and this is shown by all the studies, is partially set by conservation, conservation technologies, which are not only in the given moment the most effective, but which also return their investment very quickly. This next direction is an orientation toward what we know how to produce at home ourselves, and in our case it is still coal, and will continue for a long time. It's atomic energy, hydro – I would say the potential of those 20, 30, maybe 50 small hydroelectric power plants will in no way influence our consumption. On renewable sources, I would rather orient towards the term 'low-emission' instead of 'renewable,' and that we should find technology, and of course search for new substitutes, new technologies and decreased dependence on imports.
The situation in every country is specific. It's different. Every country has different geography, different natural conditions, its own different resources. If some countries themselves don't start to do something about it, they will be 100 % dependent on imports. Typical countries include, for example, Denmark and the Netherlands. Certain countries, such as Sweden or France, advantageously combine renewable sources with nuclear energy, and for this reason they have a relatively happy energy mix,. With this, I am indicating that despite the fact that this discussion is complicated in the Czech Republic, the direction of the next development in energy for at least the basic burden of producing electrical power will be atomic energy, whether some like it or not. It is simply the alpha and omega of this next development, whether they are reactors of the third and a half generation or fourth generation, development will go in this direction and it is impossible to realise it in another way.
Those who have coal will of course burn it, and it would be ideal if they burned it in some clean, effective way; if they used new modern clean coal technologies, if they of course increased the effectivity and with it improved fuel consumption, they would extend its useful life.
Renewable sources are an useful supplement. It will never resolve the basic burdens of countries that are built on on it, which have different natural conditions than countries such as the Czech Republic, with its highly-developed industry, with its high consumption and relatively demanding production and so on.
With this, I may have introduced the situation here.
During the French presidency, the so-called climate-energy package was approved; great hopes were raised for it, great expectations, and the principle of 20-20-20 actually came to control the European discussion. It actually dominated European discourse in this area. I would say that the resulting product is a compromise, which, for countries such as ours, will especially enable us to deal with energy-demanding production. It will enable us to invest large amounts into our energy sector right in the period of the next 15 years, to enable a change or a shift of this energy mix in the desired direction. I am convinced that this compromise is all right.
The ambitions and so on promoted by the leadership of the European Union in this area have several bottlenecks and several limits, and also for this reason we are now intensively negotiating - Martin Bursík is going to Japan, and then to Washington – with countries that have far greater emissions burdens, and burden the earth far more. Regardless of what we think about the CO2 parameters - anything regarding CO2 emissions - without their involvement on the project makes the European project absurd. When one considers that today's European Union creates 15 % of worldwide CO2 emissions, and at the same time the commitment to decrease emissions by 20 % or respectively 30 %, when everyone agrees on it, that's still only 3 % of worldwide CO2 emissions. I am convinced that if the world does not come to an agreement with China, then that 3 % of worldwide emissions will be produced by China in uncontrolled production within two years. So I am convinced that this entire ambition is very highflown, or it is really an ambitious project. Without agreements with America, Russia, India, China, Brasil, without agreements with these major players, in my opinion, what will come home is when the European Union will re-evaluate this expensive project, because it won't have impacts on a global or any other scale, because emissions are without borders, so a global benchmark in this regard does not exist.
Nevertheless, we have this phase more or less behind us, and preparations are being made for the summit in Copenhagen, where the post-Kyoto process should move forward. It is where the main rules for the global players, including the European Union, should be agreed upon. That the preparations for this summit would fall on us is piquant, but on the other hand we are the only country to have as its environment minister the chairman of the Green Party, and Martin Bursík – and I'm not saying this ironically – is performing undoubtedly well, because the approach must be rational.
What we are doing was ushered in by the so-called gas crisis, and I would say it is far from finished. Everyone who has worked on this knows that none of the problems have been removed; we are still dependent on one pipe. We're actually dependent on two, so we're doing better. A certain risk still exists that tomorrow or the day after, the gas coming across Ukraine could stop. I'm almost happy. If I wanted to emphasise our priority of energy security, and I'm saying this with with a bit of exaggeration, nothing better could happen than these events, this crisis, to strip gas down and show the huge vulnerability certain European countries have - and unfortunately it is only certain countries because the solidarity frequently does not exist – to imports of gas and oil, and the dependency on them. I'd say it actually threatens Western Europe more than anything else, because without energy in the future, there will be no independence, and without independence there will be no freedom. I remember one of Sakharov's articles, which was, I think, more than 30 years ago. He wrote an article called "Europe, the atom and freedom." He of course applied himself directly to the use of nuclear energy, but he clearly ushered in a discussion; that the threats to this civilisation come from several directions, and one of these is a lack of or dependence on energy.
We have named the prescription for decreasing dependence. The discussion in the EU was started also thanks to us, thanks to our priorities, and this is of course about diversification of our supply routes. We are convinced and are trying to convince others that there must be, of course, a diversification of sources. Dependence on gas, which either comes from from the Russian Federation or is controlled by the Russian Federation is no such diversification in this regard. There is, of course, a discussion about a relatively expensive solution, the expansion of gas storage tank volume. There is a very expensive solution, which is a diversification of tools, which means the use of LNG and of course liquefied gas, because the number of potential suppliers increases sharply. There is, of course, discussion on production, or about a substitute for natural gas, which will be very complicated, because today we have some sort of dependence on gas, and in certain countries, it is even higher. Especially the cases of Bulgaria and Slovakia showed that dependence on one pipe is absolutely fatal. In this regard, the decision to diversify gas supplies by the northern route has shown itself to be very fortunate.
The next projects, whether they are to connect Gazela or the possible participation in other supplier tracks such as Nabucco show that the Czech Republic was a bit ahead of others in this, and that we have always felt the hand on those spigots on our eastern border. We had a somewhat greater sensitivity to energy dependence on a single source. I think that now the discussion about an EUR 5 billion package for the possibility to get connected, for the possibility to create storage tanks, is just a small drop among the investments that must be started in this sector.
I personally am afraid that the European Union has a whole range of common policies which I consider to be nonsense, such as agriculture or some of the others. Attempts to influence individual countries on issues that are found in their own country, which they need, are precisely the things that in my opinion will not happen, and that is my fear. The common energy policy in these principles of common negotiation, common pressure, common solutions to projects which are complicated for investments and are not within national states' power. Thus far, I fear that solidarity does not exist in this sense, and in this sense our role in the half year, and the pressure for a solution is relatively quite meaningful.
The Swedes are coming for the next half year, and they will orient themselves towards issues close to us, because we have always tried to intensify production, to concern ourselves with conservation. The issue of heat production was prepared in the Czech Republic and Slovakia far earlier than in other countries, and I must say that we do not understand certain problems less than our colleagues to the west. It is a question of energy effectiveness and joint solutions in this category of energy, where I think we should continue our discussion toward the realisation of an entire range of conservation projects. All the studies have shown that from the standpoint of decreasing emissions versus price, the most effective are savings first, immediately followed by nuclear energy and only then, somewhere behind, are renewable sources, and the least effective of all are carbon capture and storage. I say that it's better not to create CO2 than to store it.
At the conclusion of this introductory block, I'd like to say that the Czechs have distinguished themselves with a certain amount of pragmatism, with a certain rational and very flexible approach. We have been forced to historically, and in this sense we are a asset to this European Union discussion. We don't get religion easily, although sometimes we like it . We don't go easily for the majority opinion, especially at the times when that opinion isn't correct. We are, in our own way, fighters, and I think that we have enriched this discussion on the European Union by an almost uncompromising approach with the experiences in energy we have had long-term.
My wish for your 9th energy congress is that you discuss things very openly, that you don't fall in for various media cliches, that you don't leave the discussion, which I perceive very positively. It's about the fact that we must protect the environment around us, that we don't let ourselves be driven into solutions that in the final result could mean a decrease in quality of life instead of an increase. Still, we are working so that we can live better, to live healthier, to live more satisfiedly. So that, if possible, we don't have to work; in that sense, even I wish for you to not sit too long, so that you can take advantage of the beauty of Prague, to take advantage of the local hospitality and use these three days very effectively. I wish you a pleasant day.
