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Several policies and geo-economic conditions will shape the energy & CO2 future of Europe. Eastern Europe is well endowed with low carbon energy resources (natural gas, biomass) and this is an opportunity achieve the Europe’s Kyoto objective of GHG emission reduction. In turn, this situation has a major relevance to the developments in industrial transformation in non-EU European countries. What policies would be required to facilitate and foster sustainable development in the whole Europe given these conditions? This is the addressed topic in this project that wants to bring together researchers (It, UK, NL, PL, CZ, RU), public policy makers and stakeholders from industry (energy, forestry) across Europe.

The project is co-ordinated by the Instituut voor Milieuvraagstukken, Vrije Universiteit (IVM/VU) (contact person: Anna J. Wieczorek) and is organised in 2 workshops. The project wants to investigate how the climate regime and the related national and EU policies will affect the flows of energy and carbon between Western and Eastern Europe. The starting point of this project is the interdependency between Western and Eastern Europe when it comes to the development and use of energy and forest resources and the development of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol.

The work is performed by six academic institutes, each drafting a paper constituting the main input to the first workshop, whose output can be considered as the main guidance for elaborating papers to be presented and discussed in a second larger workshop. The discussions and conclusions as well as the identified possible scenarios are published together with the papers in the final report of the project; the edited volume is distributed among members of stakeholder groups.

First CFEWE Workshop
The first CFEWE Workshop took place on the 5-6th of July 2001 in Milan at Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) and the main objective was to review the present energy and climate policies and to debate the future scenarios for carbon flows between Eastern and Western Europe. In order to challenge the scope of the workshop, a more interactive meeting was organised by bringing together representatives from governments (national, European level), from large energy firms in both Western and Eastern Europe, from forestry based industries (e.g. paper industry) and from academia and through roundtable discussions.

The report on the First CFEWE Workshop is available in FEEM Newsletter 2.2001.

Second CFEWE Workshop
The second CFEWE Workshop will take place on the middle of September 2002 in Amsterdam at Instituut voor Milieuvraagstukken, Vrije Universiteit (IVM/VU). The second stage position papers will be discussed and their content will address: what would radical CO2 reduction mean for EU and Easter European areas by 2030. During the second CFEWE Workshop, possible future scenarios for policy development in respect to carbon flow in Europe will be extensively discussed. The audience of the second workshop will be broader and will include participants that hold more strategic positions in decision making. The results of this workshop will constitute concrete deliverable of the project at a European level.

The expected results of the project are: a) a better quantitative understanding of the questions on energy and carbon flows among stakeholders; b) a small number of possible scenarios for the coming 10 to 25 years regarding policies, carbon flows and related investments; c) an in depth debate on these issues with the relevant stakeholders: EU and national government representatives, energy and forestry sector representatives, NGOs and researchers; d) an end product of the studies and workshops widely disseminated among the relevant stakeholders; e) promotion of EU scientific leadership and improvement of research networking and capacity building between EU and Eastern European countries in the area of policy development, carbon flows and related investments.

The project aims at exchanging and propagating ideas, opinions and context-rich information on "carbon flows between Eastern and Western Europe" among stakeholders. The goal of the project is to identify policies for mutual benefits for both Eastern and Western Europe. In order to fulfil its objective, the project addresses the following set of research questions:

  • in what way is climate change policy (UN, EU, and national policies) likely to affect the flow of energy and carbon resources between Eastern and Western Europe?;
  • how can policies and flows of carbon affect the investments in the energy sector and the forestry and bio-mass sector both in Eastern and Western Europe?;
  • how can the various economies of Western and Eastern Europe go through a transformation of the energy and forestry sectors so that longer term climate policy goals are met, how can these transformations affect one another?;
  • what are the options of generating mutual benefits for both Eastern and Western European economies?

The geographical focus of this project includes Eastern and Western Europe. This larger East-West picture will allow identifying the options for transformation of the energy and forestry sectors in the countries under study.