U.S.-EU Energy Council Convenes

Today, the U.S. is hosting the leadership of the EU for the U.S.-E.U. Summit.

All of the media covering this event is focusing - for good reason - on the implications for the debt crisis, as in this Reuters article: "Obama to press EU leaders over debt crisis."

Overlooked in all this, however, is that there is also a meeting of the U.S-EU Energy Council, co-hosted by Secretary Clinton and Chu. Although it may not be at the top of the headlines, a series of bureacratic reshuffling, in both the U.S. and the EU, show how important Energy policy is to both of these countries. The Lisbon Treaty fundamentally reshaped the EU governance on energy and climate issues by creating a Commissioner for Climate Policy and by giving a greater role to energy policy.

Even more recently, we have seen the creation of a Bureau of Energy Resources within the State Department, as blogged on ASP's Flashpoint by Veronique Lee.

The U.S.-EU Energy council should focus on ways to jointly develop new, cleaner technologies, as well as ways to help deploy it around the world.

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