Plan proposed to see wealthier countries contribute more to renewable energy goals in the European Union.
The idea is that the distribution of the burden of reaching the mandated target of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020 will be partially determined by GDP. Currently 8.5% of the 27 European Union member states energy comes from renewable energy sources. Back when the target was set in March there was an intense debate about the accounting of renewable energy (specifically whether France could count its nuclear power as being renewable energy) and how the individual states would contribute to the initative. The 11.5 percentage increase necessary would be split, with each state having to add 5.75 percentage points to the mix and the remaining 5.75 being distributed via a calculation. While no decision is expected on even a draft until January of 2008, there are already clear advantages to the scheme. The scheme will fairly share the burden while not allowing any single state to relax or contribute nothing. This approach would of course be favorable to eastern and central European states which may thus far have not invested as much in renewable energy and might finding raising the capital difficult.
To account for countries like Sweden which have an unusually high consumption of renewable energy or smaller states which buy power elsewhere or may have little opportunity in the way of potential for renewable energy a trading scheme has been proposed to pay others to meet targets. The electronic trading system would allow countries to buy power which was produced and consumed elsewhere , but in affect counts towards the goals of the buying country.
