Poland Fails to Gain Support on Weakening EU Climate Goals

By Katya Andrusz

Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Poland failed to win more support from European Union environment ministers for watering down the bloc's climate-change proposals, threatening a deadline to reach an agreement by year-end.

Eastern members of the group, led by Poland, are unhappy with plans that would force power companies to buy 100 percent of their carbon-dioxide emission permits in auctions that would begin in 2013.

``I haven't seen any changes in viewpoint so far,'' Polish Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki said today in a telephone interview after meeting with his counterparts in Luxembourg yesterday. ``And we don't have much time left. But we'll do everything we can to make sure there's an agreement this year.''

The Polish government, which has said the plan could push up domestic energy prices by as much as 70 percent, has suggested a phased process for auctioning or a system that would combine auctions with benchmarking that would only require power stations with older technology to buy permits.

The lack of agreement among environment ministers at their meetings that ended late yesterday risks the 27-member bloc's aim to reach a new accord on curbing greenhouse gases by Dec. 31. Italy also has rejected the climate plan.

Proponents say a deal between ex-communist countries and their wealthier EU neighbors would help clinch an international agreement for curbing gases that trap heat after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

The 10 former communist countries that joined the EU earlier this decade are being unjustly treated as their economies try to catch up with their richer western neighbors, Nowicki said. The region should be rewarded because without cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by the eastern states the EU would not meet its pledge under the Kyoto treaty to curb emissions 8 percent by 2012 compared with 1990, he said.

``It's only after putting our region into the equation that the EU meets the Kyoto pledges,'' Nowicki said. ``So we're saving the EU from a big embarrassment.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Katya Andrusz in Warsaw at kandrusz@bloomberg.net