EU summit seeks unity on tackling global warming

(BRUSSELS) - EU leaders should this week make the most ambitious commitment ever to tackle climate change, the EU Commission's president said on Tuesday, but officials admitted that the devil is in the detail.

The 27 member states are keen to forge a united front when they meet in Brussels on Thursday and Friday and to place the European Union in the front line of the fight against climate change.

With temperatures, oil prices and the EU's dependency on overseas oil supplies increasing, "the status quo is not an option," president of the bloc's executive body Jose Manuel Barroso told a news conference in Brussels.

The countries' leaders are expected to agree on cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 20 percent by 2020, and up to 30 percent if emerging economies, particularly China and India, join them, German EU presidency sources said in Berlin.

A 20 percent cut would save 100 billion euros and some 780 million tonnes of CO2 a year, according to figures from the commission.

A 10 percent quota for bio-fuels, made from rape seed and other crops, is also on the agenda.

Barroso described the plan as "the most ambitious commitment ever made to tackle climate change."

However the EU foreign ministers who held talks here on Monday were split almost down the middle on the issue of introducing a binding target of 20 percent for the use of renewable energy sources -- including wind, wave and solar power -- up from a present level of around seven percent.

France, Poland and the Baltic states oppose setting a mandatory target and want to leave it to member countries to choose their own approach to cutting emissions of the gases that cause global warming.

The German side cited as an example of the perils of global warming a projection that 75 percent of European ski resorts will have to close if global warming "continues along these lines."

But it admitted that strong economic forces are in play, not least because renewable energy does not yet come cheap.

"No breakthrough was possible. It will have to be debated at the European council," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters on Monday.

"It's not just a question of one or two countries being against ... I wouldn't hold out any great hope that we are going to make a huge step forward" on renewables, a German source said Tuesday.

Another contentious issue is what role nuclear energy should play in reducing greenhouse gases.

The French government, relatively highly dependent on nuclear fuel, believes that other no- and low-carbon emissions fuels, such as nuclear, should be given a quota target. The idea is anathema to anti-nuclear nations such as Austria and Ireland.

Energy policy has climbed high on the EU's political agenda over the last year due to the growing need to find less polluting sources and concerns about the reliability of Russia as a supplier of oil and gas.

Berlin is also pushing for more energy-saving measures, including the increased use of more energy-efficient light bulbs and better home insulation.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a former environment minister, and Barroso will be pushing for the EU states to give a firm message to European citizens and the rest of the world.

The EU leaders hope that a strong message from their summit, largely dedicated to energy issues, will push forward the green agenda at a summit of G8 industrialised nations leaders in Germany in June.

However the German sources stressed that even if there is a general agreement on cutting CO2 emissions by 20 or 30 percent, discussions on the burden-sharing -- how much each country must do individually -- have not even begun and the whole process could take two years or more.

The EU 27 will also tackle the thorny issue of "unbundling" Europe's giant energy companies -- a process which would split them into separate production, transport and distribution entities.