The EU faces huge challenges to meet its new target on the use of renewable energy, starting with tough rounds of haggling over which countries will bear the biggest burden, experts said.
At a summit on climate change EU leaders overcame divisions on Friday to set a binding target for renewable energy to provide 20 percent of Europe's needs by agreeing that some countries would do more than others.
Countries like Poland and the Czech Republic are heavily dependent on carbon energy sources like coal and called therefore for a flexible approach that would share the burden depending on each country's situation.
PHOTO: AP
"The specialities and peculiarities of each country will have to be taken into consideration," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who chaired the two-day summit in Brussels.
She acknowledged that it would be a "difficult task" to share the burden but said she was "optimistic, I think we will achieve results."
"Each member state views itself as a special case, so to a certain extent everybody is equal," she said.
The European Commission is to set the stage for the showdown by making proposals in the second half of the year about how much individual member states should do to meet the overall target.
"I've given assurances to colleagues in the council that we will do so in all fairness with the member states," European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said after the summit.
The target for renewable energy, which is supposed to be met by 2020, made a broader agreement on fighting climate change possible with plans in particular to cut the EU's greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels, also by 2020.
World Wildlife Fund climate and energy expert Stephan Singer stressed that if the EU's ambitions were to prove to be more than hot air then their promises would need to be followed with concrete actions.
"It is clear that the targets decided [on Friday] will only be achieved with solid laws, measures and incentives," Singer said.
"The targets must be translated into a shift of investments towards green technologies, rather than to nuclear power stations," he added.
Friends of the Earth campaigner Jan Kowalzig said that the EU should set targets for renewable energy use in individual industries to spur investments in such technologies.
"Agreeing such a vague target on the share of renewables instead of sector-specific targets is leaving in limbo how to generate enough confidence for investors to spur massive commercial uptake of renewable energies in all sectors," he said.
Energy analyst Sally Bogle at consultants Global Insight also sounded a note of caution about the need to invest in the new technologies that would boost renewable energy use to 20 percent by 2020.
"The key challenge will be the choice of new generation to replace ageing infrastructure in the coming decade," she said.
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