EU anti-pollution plans meet with cool reception

By Jeremy Lovell

Reuters - Wednesday January 23 2008

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LONDON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Activists and environmentalists reacted cooly on Wednesday to the European Commission's new plans to cut climate warming carbon emissions by one-fifth and boost energy from renewables like wind, waves and sun by 2020.

The Commission's plans will implement renewable energy and emissions-cutting targets agreed by EU leaders last March, and require approval by member states and the European Parliament.

But the 20 percent greenhouse gas emissions cuts are well below the 25-40 percent target the European Union agreed at a meeting of UN environment ministers on the Indonesian island of Bali last month.

"We think there are some strong elements in the package as a good start towards the new energy future of the EU, but the weak proposals on greenhouse gas emissions show a real lack of ambition," Friends of the Earth campaigner Sonja Meister said.

"We like the 20 percent renewables target for 2020, but think the 10 percent biofuels goal is wrong. It can never be sustainable. We are already at two percent and that is already causing major problems around the world," she added.

Fellow environment campaign group Greenpeace expressed similar views, praising the package as a whole but being strongly critical of some of its constituent parts.

"This package contains a number of progressive elements but one fundamental drawback; its emissions numbers do not yet add up to a 30 percent cut," said Mahi Sideridou, the group's EU climate and energy policy director.

"As things stand, EU countries and industry will deliver less climate action than we need, by aiming for an inadequate emissions cut of 20 percent," she added.

Campaigners welcomed the changes proposed in the EU's carbon emissions trading scheme from 2013, specifically the fact that power generators will have to pay for their permits to emit carbon dioxide.

Currently the power utilities are given the permits free of charge, although they have charged consumers the price the permits fetch on the open market thereby earning themselves billions of dollars in windfall profits.

But the campaigners criticised proposed loopholes for smokestack industries facing competition from countries outside the 27-nation bloc with no such anti-pollution measures.

"The EU has compromised to corporate lobbyists again," said Tamra Gilbertson of Carbon Trade Watch, a project of the academic watchdog Transnational Institute.

"Instead of imposing strict regulations on emissions, it is offering them a lifeline and continuing to offer free pollution permits for at least the next decade," she added.

Industry lobbyists had threatened that if they faced strong extra carbon costs they would simply relocate outside Europe.

Scientists warn that global average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to burning fossil fuels for power and transport, causing floods and famines and putting millions of lives at risk.

Despite the criticisms, the EU hopes its package of emissions control measures, the most far reaching of any to date, will act as a spur to action by other major polluters including the United States and China. (Editing by James Jukwey)

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