Hungary's efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.

Hungary says it needs to invest up to 500 million euros in renewable energy over the next six years, if it's to comply with European Union regulations. The development of renewable energy - particularly energy from wind, water, solar power and biomass - is a now a central aim of the EU's energy policy in order to reduce green house gases. Miklós Pós, head of the department of energy production in the Hungarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, talks about the requirements and the possibilities.

Photo: European Commission

"There is a decision by the EU that by 2010 they will increase from today's 14% green electricity, they will increase up to 22%. The Hungarian numbers are very far from that target because the data for green electricity here in Hungary is 0.8 percent and our national target is 3.6 percent. There are different target numbers for the different countries. For example Austria and for Spain it is about 30 percent in 2010. For Sweden with a very strong hydro potential it is 60 percent and so on. And this number in the case of Hungary is 3.6 percent. It is not high but don't forget we have not such a high hydro potential."

You talked about hydropower but what other possibilities does Hungary have to comply with this target of 3.6 percent.

"We have to use a mixture of the different type of renewable energy sources. I think the most important one in the case of Hungary is biomass. Because we have a relatively strong agriculture production, we have a lot of agriculture waste and we also have relatively good wind potential. We are very far from the utilization of this wind potential because today we have only 6 wind turbines here in Hungary and if we compare that with some EU countries like Spain, Denmark and Germany, then there are more than 6 thousand. As everyone knows we are relatively rich in geo-thermal energy. In potential numbers we have about 60 petajoules maximum and we use only 3 or 4 petajoules in the case of geo-thermal energy. And naturally we have some solar energy also. In the last two years there are more than one hundred thousand roof panels here in Hungry. It is a relatively big number."