Poland prepares terms for ok to EU climate change pact

(WARSAW) - After threatening to veto the European Union's climate package, Poland is expected to table its conditions for agreement at a meeting of EU environment ministers in Luxembourg on Monday.

"We want to build an energy-climate package (with) which poorer EU states can survive," Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at this week's EU summit in Brussels.

In a bid to curb global warming, the European Commission wants to cut emissions of greenhouse gasses by 20 percent (from 1990 levels) by 2020.

But Poland and seven other poorer EU newcomers plus Italy oppose specific measures proposed by the Commission to achieve the target, arguing their costs could stunt economic growth.

Pressured by veto threats from Poland and Italy, EU leaders agreed Thursday the package would be adopted unanimously by all EU members -- or not at all -- at their next summit on December 11-12.

The move effectively gives each and every one of the EU's 27 states veto power and risks torpedoing the EU's goal of adopting the package coinciding with the December 1-12 United Nation's climate summit in Poznan, western Poland.

Relying on coal-fired plants for virtually all its electricity, Poland has flatly rejected the European Commission's proposal for full CO2 emission quota auctions for power plants to begin in 2013.

Warsaw charges the measure, if implemented, would see energy prices in Poland skyrocket and economic growth plummet. Utilities now receive mostly free emissions.

In a bid to mitigate the cost impact of auctioning, Poland has raised several alternative proposals.

"We have three basic goals," says Rafal Grupinski, undersecretary of state to Prime Minister Tusk.

He said they include a guaranteed price corridor for the future increases in energy prices, a so-called CO2-specific benchmarking-auctioning system and including gross domestic product in calculations for CO2 emission quota costs.

"The CO2-specific benchmarking-auctioning system rewards electricity producers using the newest technologies -- emitting the least amount of carbon dioxide -- with free emission quotas, but not other (high polluters)," he said.

Earlier, Poland proposed that the auctioning of 20-percent of carbon dioxide emission quotas be introduced in 2013, rising by degrees each year to reach the full 100 percent by 2020.

Warsaw also insists that a solution to possible "price volatility" of auction prices for CO2 emission quotas must also be found.

Polish media reported this week that Tusk's government is mulling so-called Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies involving the capture of C02 emissions and storing them underground.

Some scientists, however, warn that CO2 stored this way could contaminate ground water, producing carbonic acid (H2CO3) present in effervescent, carbonated water.

"The Poznan climate conference (December 1-12) is a good date (to adopt the EU's climate package), but on the condition that the specific proposals of a country like Poland, whose energy is based on coal, will be taken into consideration," Grupinski said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a commission official told AFP that scrapping the European Commission's controversial C02 auctioning scheme would not in itself spoil the climate change goals as the overall objective of reducing industrial emissions could be kept.