Eastern member states criticise EU’s climate targets

10.07.10 Warsaw – While industrial biotechnology companies such as Royal DSM or Novozymes have welcomed new EU climate goals, believing they will provide a kickstart for a bio-based economy, eastern European countries like Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Poland are criticising them as “too ambitous”.
Eastern stakeholders complain that the new climate goals adopted by the EU Council at the end of June in the “Europe 2020” strategy could hamper Europe’s competiveness. Polish Environment Minister Andrzej Kraszewski said that his country would need more time to implement the targets: a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, an increase in the use of renewable energies by 20%, and a 20% cut in energy consumption. Experts say that Poland could achieve a 14/10/10 % target if it would exploit all of the currently avail­able reduction potentials, but stressed that 10/7/7 % would be more realistic. According to Kraszewski, the option to go beyond the 20% CO2 target proposed by the EU Council would only make sense if similar reduction plans were adopted by the biggest emitters of greenhouse gas – China and the US. Otherwise, he said, “Europe’s economy will become less com­petitive.” He proposed adopting climate protection measures suitable to the specifics of EU member states.
General criticism is also coming from Polish and Bulgarian industry stakeholders. They believe that a 10-year perspective is too short, as investments in new technologies for CO2-reduction will not produce measurable effects in that time-scale. Biotechnologies that fix the greenhouse gas from power plants are still being developed. B