Brussels - The next European Union executive must make it a priority to clean up Europe's electricity and transport systems to help fight global warming, its current head said Wednesday in his first comment on future policies. "We need to come up with concrete policies to de-carbonize our electricity supply and transport fuels, to transform the grid. That's the concrete task of the next commission," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.
Barroso's term as head of the commission is set to end in November, but he is widely tipped to win a second mandate from EU member states, giving his words extra weight.
The EU has already agreed to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas most linked with global warming, to at least 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
The policy encourages industrial emitters, such as power plants, to cut emissions by forcing them to buy permits to emit CO2, gives car manufacturers concrete reductions targets for the vehicles they sell, and sets targets for the amount of low-carbon power such as wind and solar power which each EU state should generate.
Barroso's comments suggest that the Brussels-based commission could come out with more specific rules in the next five years.
