The Parliamentary Assembly consequently recommends that the Committee of
Ministers encourage the member states of the Council of Europe, the European
Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe to:
4.1 investigate more fully the impact of each
type of energy on the environment and health, develop a common yardstick to
enable them to be compared and accordingly inform those responsible for
planning production facilities and distribution networks as well as the general
public;
4.2 co-ordinate their action to ensure that energy prices better reflect
the environmental costs to society of producing and distributing
energy;
4.3 eliminate indiscriminate energy subsidies, which are resulting in
end-use prices below the true costs in some central and east European
countries;
4.4 focus, in their general research effort, on the development of clean
and renewable energies with the view of considerably increasing their
contribution to the future energy supply;
4.5 invest more heavily in the necessary research and development in
order to achieve systematic lowering of the costs of renewable energy
technologies and to ensure safe, sustainable and efficient energy
storage;
4.6 support technological innovations that may reduce emissions from the
traditional combustion engine, and promote research and development of
alternative technology for the transport sector;
4.7 devise incentive measures, such as guaranteed markets for initial
output, in order to attract private investment in renewables;
4.8 take effective measures to support the needs of the central and east
European countries to enhance their energy efficiency, safety and industrial
restructuring;
4.9 replace existing nuclear reactors with advanced, evolutionary
European Pressurised Reactors (EPR), which combine economic competitiveness
with the highest safety standards, encouraging the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development to upgrade the nuclear reactors in its
region;
4.10 encourage new designs such as direct-cycle, high-temperature modular
reactors, which are energy-efficient and have inherent safety features, and
hybrid reactors such as the “Rubbiatron”, which can be used in actinide
transmutation (reducing the volume and radioactivity of long-life nuclear
waste), and develop rapid-neutron technology in view of its energy
potential;
4.11 encourage successful management and elimination of nuclear waste in
safe, economic conditions acceptable to the populations concerned, inter alia,
by harmonising regulatory frameworks and providing accurate information to the
public;
4.12 raise public awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of each
type of energy and of the need for an optimum combination of them, in order to
satisfy objectives such as price, supply security and environmental
conservation.
