EU leaders agreed Friday on a bold set of measures to fight global warming, pledging that a fifth of the bloc's energy will come from green power sources such as wind turbines and solar panels by 2020 and 10 percent of European cars will run on biofuels.
At French insistence, the deal - which does not yet include an enforcement mechanism - noted the role atomic energy could play in replacing coal- or oil-fired power plants blamed for pumping out greenhouse gases. The inclusion caused unease for non-nuclear states such as Austria and Ireland and triggered complaints from environmental groups.
European leaders said the agreement, the first to go beyond the 35-nation Kyoto Protocol in its targets for greenhouse gas emissions cuts, marked a turning point in the fight against global warming.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel challenged other nations to follow suit, saying the world still had time to "avoid what could well be a human calamity" caused by climate change.
The EU deal was a compromise between nations that had demanded mandatory targets on clean energy, and eastern European nations led by Poland and Slovakia who had said they did not have the money to meet such high targets for developing costly alternatives.
The deal makes three main promises to be obtained by over the next 13 years:
_ Greenhouse gas emissions will be cut by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels;
_ The EU will produce 20 percent of its power through renewable energy, an increase from the current figure of around 6 percent;
_ One-tenth of all cars and trucks in the 27 EU nations should be running on biofuels made from plants.
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