Poland’s secretary of state for climate policy says the European Union should delay setting 2030 climate change targets to next year when other countries are due to detail their pledges.
Poland, one of the most polluting nations in the EU says this could enable the bloc to align with its targets with other countries.
Reuters Newsagency reports Marcin Korolec, chair of last year’s United Nations climate summit in Warsaw, said the EU is responsible for a small share of global greenhouse gases and therefore should not rush to announce its pledges.
“Decisions on climate and energy policy of the EU should take into account the global process, otherwise repeat the failure of Copenhagen, when the unilateral actions of Europe were not met with a response from others,” he said in a statement on the Polish environment ministry’s website.
Reuters reports he was referring to the UN’s doomed 2009 climate summit in the Danish capital.
Mr Korolec said the EU should not submit its greenhouse gas reduction plans until the first quarter of 2015, an aspirational yet vague deadline set in Warsaw for countries “in a position to do so” to announce their emissions reduction pledges.
Those pledges are meant to form the foundation of a new global climate pact, which is expected to be agreed at a Paris summit later in 2015 and enter into force from 2020.
On January 22, the European Commission presented proposed climate and energy target goals for 2030, calling for a 40 per cent cut in carbon dioxide emissions from 1990 levels.
Ministers and the European Parliament must back the plans before they can be formally submitted to the UN.
The package, which also includes a bloc-wide goal to source at least 27 per cent of its energy from renewable sources, is less ambitious than would have been expected, given the progress already made on the 2020 targets.
Since their adoption in 2008, EU resolve has weakened in the face of concerns about the economy and rising energy costs.
The EU pledged at that time to cut emissions by 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, a target that it has nearly achieved years in advance.
It later offered to raise that to 30 per cent should a more ambitious global pact be inked in Copenhagen, a key negotiating demand by the bloc.
Reuters reports the EU was shunted to the sidelines in the waning hours of the December 2009 summit, forced to watch as the United States, China, and other major emerging economies agreed on a non-binding accord that was widely seen as a failure.
Mr Korolec, who was sacked as Poland’s environment minister in the middle of the Warsaw summit, said he met last week with six Eastern European countries including Visegrad Group members the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, but it was not clear whether Poland’s view was shared by the other governments.
His comments echoed those made in late January by EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, who publicly criticised the bloc’s proposed policy that he had helped launch a week before.
Mr Oettinger, speaking at a January 28 industry conference in Brussels, said those who expected the EU plan to “save the world” were “arrogant or stupid” and publicly questioned whether the emissions reduction was even achievable.
