Questão de Língua Inglesa

3 At the same time that President Bush is urging America to free itself from its addiction to oil from unstable parts of the world, European leaders are calling for a more self-sufficient energy policy that relies less on oil and 5 natural gas. “Europe is becoming ever more dependent on oil and gas imports from geopolitically uncertain regions,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso alerted last month in a speech. “We have to do something 1 0 about this, and we have to do it now.” British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after a meeting in Berlin that Europe must develop an energy policy for the next 15 years that includes more renewable sources of energy. 1 5 The new emphasis on energy security is a result of soaring energy prices and signs that supplies may not always be available. Oil prices tripled in the last three years, from about $20 a barrel to $60. And Russia, which has become a major supplier of oil and gas to Europe, 2 0 raised concerns when it cut off natural gas to Ukraine last month during a dispute over prices. These developments have motivated a new debate on the continent about nuclear energy and brought about ambitious biofuels programs. 2 5 • Nuclear power, which with the exception of France, was disappearing in Western Europe, has re-emerged as a clean and reliable source of energy. Germany is reconsidering its plan to phase out nuclear power generation by 2020. So, too, is Britain. With the exception of France, which gets more than 70% of its 3 0 power from nuclear sources, Europe has rejected nuclear generation as too costly or unsafe since the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine nearly 20 years ago. • Sweden has just announced that it wants to be 3 5 the first nation in the world to eliminate oil as an energy source in the next 15 years. It would use ethanol for its cars, and geothermal heat and burning everything from agricultural byproducts to trash would replace heating oil. “Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020,” said 4 0 Mona Sahlin, Sweden’s minister of Sustainable Development. • The European Commission adopted in February 2006 an ambitious biofuels program to set off the production of ethanol and gas from crops and organic 4 5 waste. The goal: to more than double production — from a 1.4% share of the European fuel supply in 2005 to 5.75% in 2010. Although Europe relies less on oil than the USA, the tripling of oil prices over the last three years has been 5 0 felt. Oil provides 40% of the USA’s energy supply and about 36% of Europe’s. Europe is the largest producer of wind and solar power. Also, biofuels can help give this continent a more diverse supply of energy. But it is unlikely that Europe 5 5 can replace fossil fuel entirely, as Sweden plans. “It’s not a crisis,” says Claude Mandil, executive director of the International Energy Agency in Paris, of Europe and the USA’s energy situation. But, he remarks, “Everybody is understanding that capacities are limited 6 0 ... and the problem will not be solved overnight.” By Jeffrey Stinson, USA Today, Feb. 20, 2006