EU sets ambitious climate change targets

FRESH from the launch of a trillion-euro bid to slash dependency on Middle East oil and Russian gas, Europe sets out this week its most ambitious targets yet to offset climate change.

Tomorrow the European Commission will unveil its roadmap to mitigating climate change.

The European Union, home to half a billion people and some 20 million companies, is committed to going “green” between now and 2050 as part of passionate moves to save the planet from global warming.

However, making the leap from promise to fulfilment looks sure to be a painful process requiring politically difficult choices by national leaders.

On Tuesday, the European Commission unveils its roadmap for driving action to mitigate climate change, demanding the key farming, transport and construction sectors step up the plate.

Denmark’s Connie Hedegaard is the woman handed one of the most thankless tasks in Brussels politics — trying to pilot proposals through a crippling dependency on oil and gas imports, deep social instability in north Africa and potentially the Middle East as well as public suspicion of leaders’ number one “clean energy” preference, nuclear power.

The commission’s proposals, to cover between 2020 and 2050, should be taken hand in hand with last month’s decision by governments to announce a broad sweep of market reforms, linking national and regional electricity grids and gas pipelines by 2014.

The idea was to allow power to circulate freely and cheaply, from those who have surpluses to those who need it — with energy efficiency a core doctrine.

The other big change was to reposition domestically -produced nuclear energy at the heart of the bloc’s long-term supplies.

The attraction of low-emission nuclear generation was clear for leaders who also want to be seen to reduce carbon emissions despite deadlock at a global level on how, where and when to implement the cuts most scientists still say are required.

But radical additional measures are also needed if the EU is to deliver, ranging from rules for transport to a tax on carbon emissions.

Hedegaard’s plans are expected to cost €270 billion per year if the switchover is to become a reality — and the budget can hardly be expected to come down.

The EU is already committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80%-95% of 1999 levels by 2050 in a bid to keep global warming within a two degrees celsius threshold deemed attainable and safe by governments.