EU's sweeping climate plan aims to "give humanity a fighting chance"

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Smoke and steam billows from Belchatow Power Station, Europe's largest coal-fired power plant operated by PGE Group, at night near Belchatow, Poland December 5, 2018. Picture taken December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/File Photo

By Kate Abnett

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union policymakers on Wednesday unveiled their most ambitious plan yet to tackle climate change, aiming to lead the way for the world's biggest economies and turn green goals into concrete action this decade.

The European Commission, the EU executive body, set out in painstaking detail how the bloc's 27 countries can meet their collective goal to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by 55% from 1990 levels by 2030 - a step towards "net zero" emissions by 2050.

This will mean raising the cost of emitting carbon for heating, transport and manufacturing, taxing shipping fuels, and charging importers at the border for the carbon emitted in making products such as cement and steel abroad. It will consign the internal combustion engine to history.

"We're going to ask a lot of our citizens. We're also going to ask a lot of our industries, but we do it for good cause," EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans said.

"We do it to give humanity a fighting chance."

The "Fit for 55" measures will require approval by member states and the European parliament, a process that could take two years.

They are also likely to face intense lobbying from some industrial sectors, from poorer European member states that want to protect their citizens from price rises, and from more polluting countries facing a costly transition.

A diplomat from one EU country said the success of the package would rest on its ability to be realistic and socially fair, while not destabilising the economy.

"The aim is to put the economy on a new level, not to stop it," the diplomat said.

EYES ON GLASGOW

The EU produces only 8% of global emissions, but hopes its example will elicit ambitious action from the world's other major economies when they meet in November in Glasgow for the next milestone U.N. climate conference.

The package arrives days after California suffered one of the highest temperatures recorded on earth, the latest of a series of brutal heatwaves that have hit Russia, Northern Europe and Canada.

As climate change makes itself felt from the typhoon-swept tropics to the blowtorched bushlands of Australia, Brussels proposed a dozen policies to target most big sources of the fossil fuel emissions that trigger it, including power plants, factories, cars, planes and heating systems in buildings.

The EU has so far cut emissions by 24% from 1990 levels, but many of the most obvious steps, such as reducing reliance on coal to generate power, have been taken already.

The next decade will require bigger adjustments, with a long-term eye on 2050, by which date scientists say the world must have reached net zero carbon emissions to prevent climate change becoming catastrophic.

The measures follow a core principle: to make polluting more expensive and green options more attractive to the EU's 25 million businesses and nearly half a billion people.

For some EU countries, the package is a chance to cement the EU's global leadership in fighting climate change, and to be at the forefront of those developing the technologies needed.

Danish climate and energy minister Dan Jorgensen said it would signal to the rest of the world that "it is possible to both set ambitious goals and introduce the concrete necessary measures to reach them".

But the plans have exposed familiar rifts. Poorer member states are wary of policies that will raise costs for the consumer, while regions that depend on coal-fired power plants and mines want guarantees of more support for a transformation that will cause dislocation and require mass retraining.