José Manuel Barroso announced on January 23 that the EU will be pursuing a comprehensive environmental regulation strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020. His speech, entitled “20 20 by 2020: Europe’s Climate Change Opportunity” set the goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 20% and reaching 20% usage of renewable fuels. The methods employed in achieving these goals will include a new Emissions Trading System, binding national emissions targets, and a 10% target for biofuel usage.
The cost of the plan is estimated to be less than .5% of the EU’s GDP, or about 3 Euro per citizen per week.
See the original press release here. See the BBC coverage here.