Achieving new climate and energy targets for EU proving difficult

EiD already provided readers with maps on the current positions of member states for future climate and energy targets for 2030. There is certainly no consensus. While the UK Secretary of Energy, Ed Davey, believes that a compromise is possible, one must hope it is not the lowest common denominator. This article by Henry Foy, Christian Oliver and Pilita Clark in the Financial Times explains how Poland is leading the opposition to ambitious targets.

Poland leads opposition to EU energy deal

Poland and other eastern European countries are prepared to scupper the EU’s landmark climate change deal next week if they do not receive greater guarantees about their future energy costs.

Spearheaded by Germany, Britain and France, the EU wants to seal an agreement at a summit on October 23-24 to ensure the 28-member bloc will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But coal-dependent Poland and some of its neighbours argue that the EU’s proposals to compensate them for modernising their heavy industry do not go far enough.

The opponents to the deal, led by Poland and the Czech Republic, but also including Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, are ready to walk away from the summit if they are not offered improved terms.

“This may fail,” Rafal Trzaskowski, Poland’s European affairs minister, told the Financial Times. “We have our well-entrenched red lines . . . If they are not ready to take into consideration our apprehensions, then we will decide later this week or early next week not to deal with the issue at the summit.”

Brussels wants to compensate eastern European nations for the potential costs by allocating them allowances from the EU’s carbon market but officials in Warsaw argue that the current plan on the table cannot guarantee enough cash that the huge overhaul of its coal industry requires to meet the EU’s targets.

A delay in finalising the EU’s 2030 energy and climate targets would be a setback for international climate talks aimed at getting nearly 200 countries to seal a new global deal in Paris in December next year.

The central Europeans think that their best chance of a sweetened deal is to postpone a decision on the emission reduction targets into the next commission, rather than accept a rushed compromise this month. Brussels is proposing that, by 2030, countries should reduce their emissions by 40 per cent from 1990 levels.

Poland fears that this target would hit its economy disproportionately because 90 per cent of its electricity comes from coal and Warsaw argues that the EU deal will drive up consumer prices 120 per cent between 2021 and 2030. Likewise, an unusually high percentage of Czech industry is dependent on energy-intensive manufacturing.

“What we are trying to do is work with the assumption that we want a compromise,” said Mr Trzaskowski, describing a “common position” between the five countries. “The most important thing is that we do not take additional burdens that will increase the cost of energy.”

A senior Polish official involved with the negotiations said that Warsaw was “not confident” that there would be a deal next week. Marcin Korolec, Poland’s environment minister, said on Monday that EU countries were still “very far” from a compromise.

That view is echoed in Prague, according to a Czech official briefed on the negotiations, who said eastern European countries were concerned that the outgoing European Council president, José Manuel Barroso, was in a hurry to seal the agreement before his term ends in November.

The EU has long been a standard bearer for countries pushing for a tougher agreement in the UN-backed talks and had been widely expected to be among the first to put forward a robust set of 2030 targets for cutting the bloc’s emissions.

A delay in finalising those targets would in no way be fatal for the already complex and uncertain talks, but it could embolden other countries wary of the EU’s stance, such as Australia and Canada, to try to block a tougher outcome in Paris.