Energy security at core of G7 meeting in Rome

Collective energy security and the necessary actions to ensure it were at the core of the meeting of G7 energy ministers which concluded in Rome on Tuesday, a statement from the Italian Economic Development Ministry said. "Strengthening a common energy policy on a worldwide scale in order to ensure a diversified, reliable and economically sustainable energy supply was the goal of the summit," the statement said. The energy ministers of France, Germany, Britain, United States, Japan, Canada and Italy took part in the two-day meeting along with European Commissioner for Energy Gunter Oettinger and the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Maria van der Hoeven. The debate analyzed "the strategies to reduce energy dependency and its related risks," Italian Economic Development Minister Federica Guidi said in the final press conference. The seven ministers, Guidi said, agreed on the need to support diversification of primary sources and of energy production and dispatching technologies, on the commitment for energy efficiency and for a wider use of sources alternative to hydrocarbons. Development and modernization of infrastructure was another leading theme highlighting the need for more powerful and more integrated energy networks, capable to ensure supplies even in the case of energy shocks, she added. "This means more interconnections between countries, development of new plants to produce, receive and dispatch Liquefied Natural Gas, widespread availability of smart grids and of efficient storage systems for electricity and gas," Guidi was quoted as saying by the statement. "The last theme addressed was how to harmonize policies regarding raw materials markets, the mechanisms of energy and CO2 price formation, the defence of competition, free access to markets and infrastructures and systems of stimulus for renewable sources and energy efficiency," she also added. The meeting's conclusions are set to be submitted to the oncoming G7 summit in June in Brussels, also with the aim of contributing to the discussion on climate change that will take place at the 2015 Paris Conference.