(EnergyAsia, March 9 2012, Friday) — The World Coal Association (WCA) has called for European Union (EU) to drive down the costs of low-carbon technologies and incentivise the improvement of power generation efficiency, especially at coal-fired power plants.

Participants at last week’s industry roundtable at the European Parliament, jointly held by WCA and Member of the European Parliament Boguslaw Sonik, recommended that the EU should not change its mitigation ambition for 2020.

He said the climate change negotiations at the 2011 Durban, South Africa summit were an important step towards a global climate deal and stressed that the EU should not be the only region to take on the burden of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Mr Sonik defended coal as an important energy resource for Europe because of its role in strengthening the region’s security of energy supply and criticised the EU’s climate policy for aiming to phase out coal instead of focusing on reducing GHG emissions from coal.

The other participants at the roundtable included Tomasz Chruszczow, Poland’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, Milton Catelin, chief executive of the World Coal Association, Nick Campbell, chairman of the BusinessEurope Working Group on Climate Change, and Jean-Yves Caneill, head of environment at France’s EDF.

The WCA said there was “general agreement” that Durban produced a number of important decisions, in particular the decision to include CCS in the clean development mechanism (CDM) system spelled out under the Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming.

The roundtable was also attended by other Members of the European Parliament and their staff, the European Commission, NGO representatives from the European Climate Foundation and WWF, as well as other industry association representatives including Central Europe Energy Partners, the International Emissions Trading Association and the Italian Association of Electricity Enterprises. The event was also attended by representatives of companies working in the energy business, including Total and RWE.

Mr Catelin said: “CCS is a crucial element of the low-carbon portfolio. If governments are truly serious about climate change, they should invest just as much in CCS as they do in renewable technologies. The world needs CCS because coal use will continue to grow in the foreseeable future.”

The WCA said panel members agreed that there is no certainty a climate deal will be reached in 2015 as foreseen under the Durban Platform agreement. They also acknowledged that an important debate will need to take place on how to differentiate between the emerging economies such as China and the least developed countries in the debate on how to finance access to low-carbon technologies.

The panel expects the debate on both issues to start at the Climate Change Conference in Bonn in May.