THE clock was ticking, tempers were strained. It was the last significant sticking point in agreeing the action plan that is expected to be the main outcome of the World Summit. But in the end the European Union had to admit defeat.
The final text would set no specific targets for increasing the use of energy from wind, wave and sun, and negotiators from the US, Japan and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, led by Saudi Arabia, could go home claiming a key victory.
Though hugely symbolic, European targets for renewables were never more than modest. At the moment 14 per cent of the world’s energy comes from renewable sources – 2 per cent from “clean” wind, solar and wave and a further 12 per cent from dirtier biomass burning. The EU wanted to increase the total to 15 per cent by 2010 – Brazil went further, calling for a target of 10 per cent on the clean renewables alone. Instead, the final agreement will merely urge countries to act “with a sense of urgency” to “substantially increase the global share of renewable energy sources”.
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EU negotiators abandoned their drive for a renewables target after the US had agreed to the aim of halving the number of people without access to adequate sanitation by 2015. Most observers in Johannesburg suspect that a trade-off was made behind the scenes.
There was also disappointment that the final agreement endorsed “cleaner fossil fuel technologies” and did not specifically rule out nuclear power. It could be used to justify more nuclear and coal-fired power stations, critics said.
“We are bitterly angry that the OPEC countries, Japan and the United States have combined in this way to help wreck the world’s environment,” declared Kate Hampton from Friends of the Earth. Margot Wallstrom, the European Environment Commissioner, inevitably put it more diplomatically: “This is not an ideal text for us.” And the text is no more forceful about the Kyoto Protocol. It merely calls on states to ratify it “in a timely manner”.
