The EU will start talks with the Chinese on developing industry-wide approaches for cutting emissions in early July, Danish EU Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has revealed.

Despite giving industrialised countries a hard time around the negotiating table, China is quietly moving towards its targets, Hedegaard said.

The Danish commissioner revealed that the EU was going to start talks with the Chinese on developing industry-wide approaches for cutting emissions in early July.

"I suggested that to China's minister in late April and I thought he would just say 'no', but he said it might be a good idea," the commissioner said in a recent interview, adding that China was currently looking at several sectors such as cement, aluminium and steel.

She added that while China needs to significantly increase energy efficiency in these energy-intensive sectors to fulfil its domestic targets, these are also the sectors in Europe that are most exposed to foreign competition.

"So it's a good example that if we could cooperate with the Chinese to develop sectoral approaches that would be rather interesting, not only for them but definitely also for us," Hedegaard said.

30% or not?
On 26 May this year, Hedegaard presented the options for increasing the EU's emissions reduction target from 20% from 1990 levels by 2020 to 30%, saying that meeting a 30% target would cost just 11bn euro more than the estimate for 20% envisaged two years ago.

On 23 June, Taxation and Customs Union Commissioner Algirdas Semeta initiated a debate on revising the EU's Energy Taxation Directive to include a tax on the carbon content of fuels.

Hedegaard said the EU wanted to examine the consequences of raising the target of 30% before the UN climate conference in Cancan at the end of the year. However, this might not be possible as member states close their administrations for the summer recess, Hedegaard said.

The EU will not go to Cancan with the same rhetoric as Copenhagen, where European leaders said it was now or never for agreeing a new climate treaty, the climate commissioner stressed.

"If we were to say 'everything that Copenhagen didn't deliver, Cancan must now deliver', then you would run a big risk of not achieving anything," she said.  Instead, she believes Cancan should seek agreement on substantial issues like forestry, adaptation and fast-start financing and leave wrangling over the legal format to South Africa in 2011, after developing countries have seen what is in it for them.