Reports: EU pushing for global renewable energy targets

The EU is planning to call on the rest of the world to emulate its low carbon strategy and adopt global targets for renewable energy use and energy efficiency improvements.

According to Reuters reports, EU officials are working on a new negotiating position ahead of next June's Rio+20 sustainability summit that will see Brussels call for binding renewable energy and energy efficiency targets, in addition to targets to cut emissions.

"We should aim at globally binding targets," Karl-Heinz Florenz, a member of the European Parliament who helped draft a resolution on the new proposals, told the news agency.

The EU's flagship climate change strategy is built around three separate targets for 2020 demanding that the region cut emissions by 20 per cent, improve energy efficiency by 20 per cent, and generate 20 per cent of energy from renewable sources.

EU lawmakers gathering in Strasbourg this week also outlined plans for the EU to phase out all "environmentally harmful subsidies" by 2020, and signalled their support for a global tax on financial transactions that could be used to raise funds for investment in climate change projects.

The latest developments come ahead of the next round of UN-backed climate change talks in Panama next week, when diplomats are once again expected to clash over the future of the Kyoto Protocol.

The week of negotiations represents the last chance round of talks ahead of December's main summit in Durban.

Experts are sceptical that significant progress will be made towards ending the deadlock over the future of the Kyoto Protocol, but there is cautious optimism that progress may continue to towards the formation of an agreed Green Climate Fund capable of investing up to $100bn a year in climate change projects.

There are also hopes that negotiators will continue work on a plan to extend the Clean Development Mechanism offsetting scheme beyond 2012.