Yesterday the European Parliament voted for binding sectoral targets to ensure that renewable energy meets 25% of the European Union’s primary energy consumption by 2020. At the same time, but in a separate meeting, representatives from the EU’s 25 member states met to discuss renewables, but only four of them — Belgium, Denmark, Germany and Sweden — said they backed a mandatory renewables target by 2020, others wanted to keep indicative targets that are not legally binding.
The European Commission is currently drafting a new “Renewables Road Map” due to be adopted on January 10. This will likely set medium- and long-term targets for renewable energy in the EU. But the key question is will those targets be mandatory — ie legally binding — or just indicative, as has been the case until now?
The EU already has a raft of “indicative” targets for 2010. They are not legally [...]
Can targets be anything but binding?
Yesterday the European Parliament voted for binding sectoral targets to ensure that renewable energy meets 25% of the European Union’s primary energy consumption by 2020. At the same time, but in a separate meeting, representatives from the EU’s 25 member states met to discuss renewables, but only four of them — Belgium, Denmark, Germany and Sweden — said they backed a mandatory renewables target by 2020, others wanted to keep indicative targets that are not legally binding.
The European Commission is currently drafting a new “Renewables Road Map” due to be adopted on January 10. This will likely set medium- and long-term targets for renewable energy in the EU. But the key question is will those targets be mandatory — ie legally binding — or just indicative, as has been the case until now?
The EU already has a raft of “indicative” targets for 2010. They are not legally [...]
Original post by The Heritage Foundation – 2006-06-12