It’s a political row that has been going on for months. Tomorrow the European Commission is due to publish its long-awaited plans to reduce carbon emissions from passenger cars to 120 grams per kilometre within five years.
But a bitter fallout between France and Germany has plunged the key negotiations into crisis. French manufacturers such as […]

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has warned China that the EU could penalise cheap imports from high carbon-emitting countries in order to defend European companies that are obliged to meet strict environmental standards.
In a speech to students at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, Mr Sarkozy urged China to shoulder its environmental responsibilities as a global economic power […]

European environment ministers have agreed to revise the EU’s CO2 emissions-trading (ETS) scheme with the aim of clamping down on weak caps proposed by member states and ensuring that all significant emitters pay the right price for their pollution.
Late last month EU ministers called for a full review of the ETS scheme, which has been […]

EU officials and OPEC met in Vienna yesterday for an “Energy Dialogue”. The EU argued that oil prices were about as high as consumers could bear, challenging OPEC to lift restrictions on production. OPEC retaliated that the oil market is already “well supplied.”
Talks between the groups ended on a conciliatory note, however, with the EU […]

Divisions over climate change threaten to derail next week’s set piece EU-US summit.
The meeting, which will be hosted by George Bush and attended by Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was seen as an opportunity for Europe and the US to align their positions on climate change before a G8 meeting in June.