Contemporary Policy Environmental Economics - Essay Example

Russian then President Putin ordered to stop supply of gas by Russian government owned Gas Company namely “Gazprom” to Ukraine. This had sent shock waves to EU’s administration. Putin’s move was politically motivated as Ukraine wanted to free from Russia and to align with the West. Putin’s action clearly demonstrated bully-boy political manoeuvres to put pressure on Ukraine’s Prime Minister Victor Yushchenko to realign with Russia again. Some critics argued that move was based on fiscal reasons to put force on Ukraine to defer market price for the gas supplied from Russia and to shell out the lion’s share of revenue it generating from key European- Russian pipeline system it operates.

Though , the supplies were resumed within few days due to pressure exerted by EU on Russia , the loss of about 40% of gas during peak winter season and this made France and Germany to summon emergency EU ministerial meetings . The fact is that Europe is heavily relying on Russian gas whereas Russia is heavily relying on European market, technology and goods. Realising the significance of the issue, EU immediately revealed its “European Energy Policy” to tackle the future energy supply crisis.

As a result, EU announced obligatory renewable energy target for each EU nation and hence, the overall EU will get 20% of its renewable source energy including for transport, electricity, aviation, cooling and heating and for UK, the target has been set at 15% by 2020. This research essay is going to analyse how UK government is going to achieve this target. It also suggests measures to be taken by UK government to achieve this target by discussing the various aspect of the research subject. Total power consumption in UK in the year 2004 amounted to 325,000 GWh which had been mainly manufactured from power plants using fuels like coal, gas and nuclear.

In 2004, renewable