March 9, 2007

EU Leaders Agree: 20% Green Power by 2020

EU leaders agreed Friday that a fifth of the bloc’s energy will come from green power sources by 2020, AP reports. No enforcement mechanism has been agreed on yet.

The deal makes three main promises to be obtained by over the next 13 years:

• Greenhouse gas emissions will be cut by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels; 
• The EU will produce 20 percent of its power through renewable energy, an increase from the current figure of around 6 percent; 
• One-tenth of all cars and trucks in the 27 EU nations should be running on biofuels made from plants.

Eastern European nations, which preferred to stay with coal and oil, went along with the deal after western nations conceded that individual targets would be set for each EU member within the overall goal.

“There’s a deal on the whole package,” one diplomat said. He explained that while the 27 leaders had set binding Europe-wide objectives, “setting national targets will be done with the consent of the member states,” MSNBC reports.

The way was cleared for a deal when Jacques Chirac, the French president, on Thursday night backed plans for a legally binding target for boosting renewable energy in the EU, provided France’s nuclear sector was taken into account when setting national targets for green power.

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