European Union foreign ministers failed to agree on Monday whether to set binding targets for the use of green renewable energy sources, setting up a potential clash when the bloc's leaders meet this week.
Diplomats said almost half the 27 member states opposed a drive by the EU's president Germany to fix a mandatory goal for renewables such as solar, wind and hydro-electric power to back Europe's ambition to lead the world in fighting climate change.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said ministers had narrowed differences on other points but "the central point of difference is on the binding nature of the target for renewables. "This point remained open and will be decided at the summit on (Thursday and) Friday."
Only Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Britain, Spain and Italy voiced strong support for a binding target of 20 percent of energy consumption from renewables by 2020, diplomats said.
France, heavily dependent on nuclear power, proposed setting a binding EU objective for "non-carbon and low-carbon energy", of which the renewables target would be just a part. Steinmeier said there was no agreement on that idea, and Spanish European Affairs Minister Alberto Navarro said: "We think these are two different issues."
Ministers endorsed EU plans for a unilateral commitment to a 20 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions, rising to 30 percent if other major industrialised and emerging powers join in. France and some central European states are wary of binding renewables targets that would impinge on national strategies.
Some EU diplomats believe French President Jacques Chirac may yield in exchange for some recognition that France's nuclear power programme helps cut carbon dioxide emissions. But any endorsement of nuclear energy is hugely sensitive in countries such as Germany, which has agreed to phase it out, and Austria, which is nuclear-free.
A possible compromise, diplomats said, could be to make the 20 percent renewables target binding on the EU as a whole but not on individual states and negotiate burden-sharing later. Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said the EU should aim for something stronger than vague guidelines and Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik said binding targets would be a sign that the bloc was serious.
"Europe has to become greener and credibly so. So benchmarking and setting ourselves goals and ambitions explicitly is a reasonable instrument," she told reporters.
Underlining the difficulties ahead, an independent audit of British climate change policies reported by the Guardian on Monday said Britain will fall short of a target of a 30 percent cut in CO2 emissions by 2020, not reaching that level till 2050.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett played down the differences on renewables and stressed the significance of the overall EU energy strategy, saying: "It will be a huge turning point for the European Union if we get an agreement and a huge turning point for the world community."