EU LEADERS have agreed a crucial deal on how to implement the union’s flagship climate change package after key compromises were made to protect heavy industries.
The deal, which must still ratified by the European Parliament in a vote next week, commits the EU to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, compared to 2005 levels.
It also commits the Union to boost energy efficiency by 20 per cent and increase the proportion of green energy to 20 per cent of the EU’s overall energy mix.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who brokered the compromise agreement that offered important concessions to Italy, Germany and a group of central EU states led by Poland, hailed the political agreement at the EU summit as historic.
European commission president José Manuel Barroso called on others to follow the EU’s lead on climate change in the lead-up to next year’s UN summit in Copenhagen, where a global deal to reduce emissions will be negotiated.
“Our message to our global partners is: “Yes, you can . . . especially to our American partners,” said Mr Barroso.
But environmental campaigners claimed the climate change deal was so diluted by compromise trade-offs that the CO2 pledges were meaningless.
“This was a moment in time when real leaders would have stepped up and taken the positions that would combat the economic and climate crisis at the same time,” said Kim Carstensen of the nature conservation group World Wildlife Fund for nature.
One key compromise is a decision to allow large swathes of heavy industries to be allocated 100 per cent of their emission allowances – permits to pollute – for free if they face competition from regions that do not face similar emissions curbs.
The commission initially wanted heavy industry – such as the steel and cement sectors – to buy their credits, but fears of “carbon leakage”, where industries relocate outside the EU, led to the compromise.
To qualify for the full 100 per cent free allowances each factory installation will have to meet the highest environmental standard under yesterday’s agreement.
States from central Europe heavily dependent on coal also won a temporary derogation from buying emission allowances for the power sectors. This means energy firms in this region will buy just 30 per cent of their permits starting in 2013, and that proportion would rise, in principle, to 100 per cent in 2020.
Ireland will also benefit from a decision to allow 12 EU states facing huge difficulties in reducing CO2 emissions to offset up to 4 per cent of their emissions by investing in green energy projects in developing countries.
Irish diplomats have ensured there is a reference to special difficulty in reducing emissions from agriculture in the text.