Yesterday José Manuel Barroso, President of The European Commission, was in town. He saw Denmark as a good place to choose for the World Business Summit on Climate Change, because as he stated 'We have two very important things on our side - public opinion and science'. During the summit he came to speak about the European joint efforts towards 2020. And stressed three points:
- The EU wants to ensure a comparable CO2 emission reduction, currently set at a 20 percent reduction (according to the 20/20/20 vision), but the EU is willing to set a 30 percent reduction goal - provided that a global deal can be sealed.
- Developing countries should do their major part in designing and implementing national low-carbon techniques and economy - and in the EU these vary from 15-30 percent below business as usual by 2020.
- The EU will rely on both public and private funding. And carbon markets should be the resource. I.e. through the ETS/Emission Trading System and CDM/Clean Development Mechanism - an initiated 'additional' carbon project that would not have been realized if not for this purpose alone.
To make a note: The variations beween the European countries are great. On the green house gas emission reduction goals towards 2020, they vary between -20 and +20 percent, compared to 2005. And on the renewable energy goal as a percentage of the total energy mix, they vary between 10 and 49 percent (Sweden is the top scorer here).