Environmental group Greenpeace blasted the signing in Ankara Monday of a deal on the Nabucco gas pipeline, urging countries instead to invest in cheaper and cleaner energy.
"Over the next few years, power from solar energy will become significantly cheaper than natural gas," Jurrien Westerhof, energy expert for Greenpeace Austria, said in a statement.
"With the Nabucco deal, Austria is committing itself for decades to drawing natural gas from supplier countries in the Caspian region, no matter what the price," he added.
The leaders of Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Turkey signed Monday a landmark deal on Nabucco to bring gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, aimed at reducing the EU's energy reliance on Russia.
But with a capacity to pump 31 billion cubic metres of gas, the pipeline will cause harmful CO2 emissions in Europe to jump by 60 million tonnes per year, Greenpeace said in its statement.
"It would be smarter to invest right now in renewable energies, as wind and sun not only do not create CO2 emissions, they don't cost anything either, neither now nor in the future," Westerhof said.
With Nabucco's estimated cost of 7.9 billion euros (10.9 billion dollars), one could install 4,000 wind turbines and produce 8,000 megawatts of wind power — more than the total amount needed by Austrian households — Westerhof noted.
Gas supplies, on the other hand, will cost about five billion euros per year, enough to buy another 2,500 wind turbines.
Greenpeace also criticised Europe's willingness to rely on imported energy from troubled regions.
"We are making ourselves dependent on a range of dictatorships and unstable democracies, who could block a pipeline at any time," he said.
"With the sun on the other hand, even they could not switch it off," he said.
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