Analysis: Breakthrough in Brussels
BERLIN, March 9 (UPI) -- European Union leaders Friday agreed to binding targets to push renewable energy sources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in a decision that puts the body in the worldwide lead to fight climate change.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel Friday, during her first leaders' summit as the EU's president, scored a huge victory when she managed to convince the 27 EU leaders to agree to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, even if the world's biggest polluters, the United States and China, don't follow the European example.
Merkel also pushed through legally binding target to raise the share of renewable energy sources -- such as wind, solar, hydro and biomass energy -- to 20 percent of the body's overall energy consumption by 2020, and set the goal for biofuels to 10 percent of automobile fuel by the same date.
The third binding goal will be to increase energy efficiency by 20 percent, also by 2020.
"It's a breakthrough in the energy and climate policy of the European Union," Merkel, a former environment minister, said Friday in Brussels. She added the decision would put the EU in a pioneering role to fight climate change.
In a Friday news conference announcing the results of the two-day summit, Merkel appeared relieved, even cheerful, and understandably so: The EU's commitment puts Merkel in an excellent position for climate protection negotiations at this June's Group of Eight summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. Merkel, besides holding the rotating six-month presidency, also chairs the G8, and she intends to press the United States, but also emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China, to agree to a 30 percent global cut in greenhouse-gas emissions to replace the Kyoto protocol after 2012.
Fifty-two-year-old Merkel has had much persuading to do to get France and some of the Eastern European countries on board.
Warning that "it is closer to five past midnight than five to midnight" for measures to combat climate change, Merkel Thursday -- on the first day of the Brussels summit -- urged her colleagues to "deliver results for our grandchildren."
Yet France, led by President Jacques Chirac, had lobbied for nuclear energy to be included in the renewable energy mix as the source doesn't emit greenhouse gases.
France gets roughly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and the energy source has experienced a revival in the wake of rising oil and gas prices and increasing concerns of whether Russia remains a reliable energy supplier.
The staunchest opposition, however, was directed against the binding nature of the renewable energy targets. Several Eastern European states argued it would be impossible for them to reach these targets.
Merkel, chairing her first EU summit, managed to convince the governments by putting a promise of "differentiated national overall targets" in the final agreement to allow some countries to achieve the goals slower than others.
There is light and shadow within the EU when it comes to renewable energy: Denmark gets nearly all of its electricity from wind and hydro power, while some of the Eastern European states still rely almost exclusively on oil and gas. Overall, renewables account for less than 7 percent of the EU's energy mix and the bloc is falling short of its existing 2012 targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The renewable energy industry, environmental groups and the European Parliament wanted the EU to go even further in its efforts to reverse climate change. EU lawmakers called on Merkel to set 30-percent targets, a goal that was torpedoed by European business leaders, who fear they will lose out to dirty but cheaper foreign-based energy sources.
"As for climate protection, of course 20 percent is not enough given the high level of emissions that has already accumulated in the atmosphere," Susanne Droege, energy and climate change expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin-based think tank, told United Press International in a telephone interview Friday. "Politically, however, this is a success and a strong signal. It was not always clear that Merkel would be able to push this through in light of substantial pressure from the European industry."
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