German Environment Minister Calls for Greater Renewable Energy Production

At a three-day conference in Berlin, Germany's environment minister calls on Europe and developing nations to set ambitious goals for renewable energy. European policymakers, scientists and businesspeople met in Berlin on Monday for a three-day conference on promoting renewable energies in the run-up to an international summit in Bonn this July. The Berlin conference's host, German Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin, kicked off the event by calling on the developing world to stop following in Europe's footsteps. "Access to sustainable energy is active climate policy, is active development policy, but access to renewable energy is also a policy for peace," Trittin told the 600 delegates from 45 countries. "Every country has a surplus of renewable energies. No country has to go to war for them …Wind turbines don't tempt anyone to wage war over oil." Trittin stressed that the root causes of global climate change had to be addressed if renewable energies were to be promoted worldwide. He pointed to the problems caused by global warming and said he hoped the trend could be reversed by a shrewd energy policy on the part of the international community. Cutting back on the use of fossil fuels and promoting renewable energies instead, he said, would reduce carbon dioxide emissions effectively. He said he hoped most European countries would adopt the German government's aim of increasing the share of renewable energies as a percentage of overall energy produced here by 20 percent by 2020 and by 50 percent by 2050.