European Union leaders meeting at a summit on Friday unanimously agreed a deal on tackling climate change, which would see EU greenhouse gas emissions cut by one fifth below 1990 levels by 2020, an EU official said. Nine eastern European countries had threatened to veto the deal over worries that full auctioning of permits under the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme would cripple their industry, which relies heavily carbon-intensive coal. Under the agreement, industry in countries where more than a third of power is produced from coal and income per capita is less than half the EU average get free permits equal to up to 70 percent of their average annual emissions from 2005-2007, dropping to none free by 2020. These companies will also be able to import a higher portion of cheaper emissions offsets from developing countries to help meet EU targets. The leaders also agreed to earmark 300 million permits worth between 4.5 billion and 6 billion euros ($6 billion-$8 billion) for cutting-edge carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. “Huge loopholes allow big energy-users to carry on polluting and nations to buy offset ‘credits' from abroad. Massive concessions were made to manufacturing industries, which will mean they are handed out rights to pollute.” “The targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions are far too small. They should be at least 40 percent by 2020.” “We feel the package didn't go far enough at all and could be considered a significant failure. It relies a lot on offsetting which would allow a lot of the targets to be met overseas outside the EU.”
