News Digest

E.U. strikes compromise to set bold new climate change targets for 2030

European Union (E.U.) leaders struck a deal on a new target to cut carbon emissions till 2030, calling it a new global standard but leaving critics warning that compromises had undermined the fight against climate change. Talks in Brussels stretched into the small hours of Friday but an overall target was agreed for the 28-nation bloc to cut its emissions of carbon in 2030 by at least 40 per cent from levels in the benchmark year of 1990. An existing goal of a 20 per cent cut by 2020 has already been nearly met, in part due to the collapse of communist-era industry in the east. E.U. leaders called the 40 per cent target an ambitious signal to the likes of the United States and China to follow suit at a U.N. climate summit France is hosting in December next year.

Deal! At least 40 per cent emissions cut by 2030. World’s most ambitious, cost-effective, fair climate energy policy agreed.

European Council chairman Herman Van Rompuy on Twitter

But environmentalists had already complained that it could still leave the EU struggling to make the at least 80 per cent cut by 2050 that its own experts say is needed to limit the rise in global average temperatures to two degrees Celsius. And they were further disappointed by a softening in the final agreement of goals for increasing the use of solar, wind and other renewable energy sources and for improving efficiency through insulation, cleaner engines and the like.