The EU has just released new energy and climate change targets for 2030, which extend the existing targets beyond their current 2020 lifetime.

The EU has set a target to reduce CO2 emissions by 40% by 2030, which many believe (also here) is not enough to make sure the EU offers a fair contribution to keeping climate change within safe limits. With a weak carbon market that goes unfixed the target could in reality only amount to a 33% cut.

There is no target for energy efficiency, which many had been hoping would make up a trio of targets.

And after lobbying, in large part from the UK, the target for the use of renewable energy use across the EU has been set at a very low 27%, only 7 percentage points higher than the current target of 20%.

This renewable energy target will not apply at the member state level.

This leaves countries like the UK free to pursue technologies like nuclear and fracking to meet its energy needs and emissions targets, rather than being forced to invest in truly clean technologies, which we have an abundance of. Under the current framework, the UK will also be able to continue to burn trees for electricity, a lot of which could actually be dirtier than coal.

These announcements do not bode well for EU ambition ahead of key international climate change talks in Paris in 2015. And let’s not forget that climate change is already having substantial consequences for people and wildlife around the planet.