No new EU climate targets until 2015 at earliest

EurActiv.com: No new carbon dioxide emissions reductions targets for 2030 will be announced until after the next EU parliamentary elections in 2014, the EU’s top climate civil servant has said. “Let’s get real: We won’t be able to do everything by 2014 like we did on the climate and energy package in 2009,” Jos Delbeke, the European Commission’s director general for climate told a conference in Brussels on 5 October.

“The time is not there,” he added. “We will have to be clear on 2030 early in the next Commission period, and that means 2015 or 2016.”

The announcement, which runs counter to soundings from Brussels insiders, could flag climate and energy battle lines for the next parliament, after a bruising round of squabbles over carbon prices in the Emissions Trading System (ETS).

The Commission’s attempts to insert a short legal amendment to the ETS clarifying how it would “backload” or stagger the numbers of allowances issued at auction provoked a reaction from “some business quarters” that was “out of proportion”, Delbeke said.

“When I see what a limited proposal of a one-lime amendment provokes in terms of emotions, then I’m losing hope that by 2014 we could come forward with a comprehensive climate and energy package,” he explained. The amendment is scheduled to be debated in the European Parliament’s environment committee on 19 February 2013, a timetable Delbeke said he was “not thrilled about”....