France dug its heels in on Thursday against setting a binding target for renewable energy sources in the European Union, setting up a potential clash with its closest ally Germany at an EU summit next week. A French official said Paris continued to oppose making the goal of obtaining 20 percent of the EU's energy needs by 2020 from renewable sources such as solar and wind power mandatory as part of the 27-nation bloc's long-term energy strategy.

However, diplomats said Germany was insisting on a binding target to underpin the EU's drive for world leadership in the fight against climate change and had maintained that objective in a draft communique for the March 8-9 EU summit.

"We are not in favor of fixing binding targets in renewable energy," said the French official after EU ambassadors argued over the draft statement on Wednesday. "It is up to each member state, in all flexibility and subsidiarity, to set its own objective. Our position has not changed," he said. Subsidiarity is the principle that decisions should be taken at the lowest effective level of government.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will chair the summit under Germany's EU presidency, omitted any mention of a mandatory target for renewables in a speech to parliament in Berlin. She urged EU leaders to approve bold steps to combat climate change but said Germany was not prepared to shoulder the same heavy burden of emissions cuts as it has in the past.

Merkel voiced support for European Commission proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the 27-nation bloc by 20 percent by 2020 and 30 percent if other big industrial nations join in.

BLAIR ON BOARD
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman confirmed he had dropped its resistance to a binding target after Merkel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso convinced him it would give the EU's green leadership greater credibility.

"We believe that this will set out in a realistic way which will take account of the individual circumstances of each country. But we believe it is right to be ambitious in Europe because that then gives us the ability to ask other countries ... to also be ambitious," the spokesman told reporters.

Some EU diplomats said they expect French President Jacques Chirac to yield at the summit in exchange for recognition that France's nuclear power program helps cut carbon dioxide emissions blamed for global warming. Nuclear energy is highly sensitive in the EU due to strong public opposition in countries such as Germany and Austria.

About 10 other countries, including several ex-communist central European new members racing to catch up economically with the wealthy west, oppose setting a binding renewables target. An agreement requires unanimity. A possible compromise might be to make the 20 percent target binding on the EU but not on individual member states, leaving burden-sharing to be negotiated later, diplomats said.

Merkel told parliament the EU had to lead on climate change. "If we continue on our current track, global greenhouse gas emissions will increase by 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990," she said. "We cannot close our eyes to the fact that this will have significant consequences."

But she said Germany could not make the same ambitious emissions pledges it made under the Kyoto Protocol. In the collapse of East Germany's industrial base after reunification, Germany agreed under Kyoto to a 21 percent emissions cut between 1990 and 2012.

"Despite the fact that we represent only 20 percent of the (EU) population and about one-fourth of its emissions, the German government committed under Kyoto to 75 percent of the (EU) reduction because of German unification," she said. "In the next period this cannot be repeated."

Merkel is hoping an agreement within the EU can set the stage for a broader international consensus on combating climate change at a Group of Eight summit she will host in June. In addition to agreeing a cut in emissions, EU leaders are expected to agree a binding target of obtaining at least 10 percent of vehicle fuel from biofuels by 2020.

(By Yves Clarisse and Noah Barkin, Reuters, 01/03/2007)
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL0155703520070301