A newly formed European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR) working group on climate change is calling for a way of measuring EU member states’ progress towards reaching a renewables target agreed by EU heads of state and government at their March summit. “The problem is that it takes away the immediate responsibility for anyone to do anything so there need to be milestones along the way. It is no good for member states to put the whole thing off until 2019 to get it right,” said House of Lords environment spokesperson for the liberal democrats Robin Teverson, who chaired the meeting.The target, for member states to ensure that 20% of their collective energy sources are renewable energies by 2020, was welcomed by the group, which met on 11 September. The European Commission is working on a methodology to ensure that the 20% burden is shared fairly between member states.Asked by an EU journalist if there may be a problem of enforcing the target, as has been the case with the Lisbon targets for growth and jobs, Lord Teverson said that “work was needed here”. “The group did not go into what kind of sanctions could be imposed but did feel that there needed to be some sort of action if targets were not met.” He stressed that, unlike the situation with the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact, where some countries had “got away with it”, the targets needed to be enforced to maintain the credibility of the commitment.The working group brought together a number of MPs from all over Europe and included a number of experts and MEPs such as Lena Ek, who is the Alliance of Liberal and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) coordinator in the European Parliament’s committee on climate change, and Chris Davies, who is the shadow rapporteur on legislation on CO2 and cars. The group’s conclusions (at the bottom of this email) will be discussed at the ELDR’s annual congress in Berlin on 18-19 October and will feed into the environmental policy of the ELDR for the 2009 European Parliament elections.Among other points, Teverson explained that the group believed that the EU should consider being a bit more “muscular” in its dealings with non-EU countries on climate change issues and that the aviation and shipping sectors needed to be included in the next phase of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme “urgently”. “Auctioning, with proceeds dedicated to increasing the production of renewable energies, should be an important part of the new EU ETS credit system,” says the group in its conclusions.Teverson also said that an “easily understandable, credible EU-wide labelling system agreed by industry showing the carbon footprint of products was needed to empower individuals to make decisions about what they buy”. “The later we leave tackling climate change, the greater the risk that state and European controls take over rather than allowing citizens to decide themselves,” he warned.For more information, email the ELDR’s Press and Communications Officer Julian Hale at communication@edlr.eu or call 0473 690749 Read more ...