DESPERATE LAST DITCH ATTEMPT TO SAVE EU CLIMATE BILL FROM DEATH ROW

EurActiv.com - EU heads towards scaled-down climate ambitions

The French EU Presidency is "putting everything on the table" in a "desperate" bid to agree on the climate and energy package before the end of the year, sources close to the negotiations told EurActiv.
Background:

On 23 January 2008, the Commission presented a series of proposals designed to transform into law the political commitments made by EU member states in March 2007 to reduce the EU's emissions of CO2 and related greenhouse gases (GHGs) by 20% by 2020, while boosting the bloc's share of renewable energy use to 20% over the same period.
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As part of its push to reach an agreement, France is putting forward a compromise that includes free emission rights for coal plants, financial compensation for energy-intensive industries and extensive use of third country emissions reductions to meet CO2 'effort sharing' targets.

Countries that use coal for more than 30% of their power generation portfolio could receive free CO2 emissions permits for several years once the revised EU ETS is launched in 2013. This would cut in half the 60% threshold originally proposed by Poland, which remains highly dependent on coal for power generation.

If adopted, coal plants in most EU member states would benefit from the scheme. Only Ireland, the UK and France would be excluded from the scheme due to their relatively low use of coal for power generation.

Anything goes
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Green groups worry that, if adopted as such, the climate package would effectively be 'dead'. The financial compensation scheme for energy-intensive sectors would also "wreck" the EU ETS and require a rethink of the entire system, according to Sanjeev Kumar, ETS coordinator at the WWF in Brussels.

There are also concerns that a weak compromise deal would seriously undermine the EU's credibility in international climate change negotiations. "Everyone is looking for the EU to fail," Michael Zammit Cutajar, former head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said in Brussels on 19 November. [Via Benny Peiser]