China has set a goal of reducing its major pollutant emissions by more than 30% to 40% by 2015 in its latest 12th five-year plan (2010-2015) for environment protection, according to a Wednesday report in the People’s Daily newspaper. 

In the report said that the outline specifies 7 major indicators, with ammonia nitrogen and nitric oxide added as two new indicators, the official said. The plan calls for ammonia nitrogen and nitric oxide emissions to be cut by 10 percent by 2015, while chemical oxygen demand (COD) and sulfur dioxide emissions should drop by 8 percent, the report said. 

The five-year outline also calls for an investment of 3.4 trillion yuan ($539 billion) in environmental protection efforts. Eight major projects, including reducing major pollutant emissions and resolving environmental problems that affect people’s health, will require a investment of nearly 1.5 trillion yuan.

Thenumber of major cities covered by China’s air quality index system has expanded from 113 to 333, with stricter assessment standards established as well. 

The outline states that local governments should shoulder most of the responsibilities in financing and implementing the five-year plan, with midterm and final evaluations to be conducted in 2013 and 2015, respectively, the report said. 

Possible the China starts becoming an european green opponent?

Last night the European leaders Summit finished early, before 10pm and last month’s bust-up with Britain, this event was uneventful, even amicable. Agreement was reached on the fiscal compact, the new treaty to toughen budget rules, in record time: less than two months.

A final row between France and Poland was resolved with a complicated compromise. This involves variable configurations of meetings involving 17 countries (the euro zone), 23 (the largely-forgotten Euro-Plus Pact, 25 (the signatories of the fiscal compact), 27 (all EU members states, still in charge of the single market) and 28 (involving soon-to-join Croatia).

It shows that, at the very least, European leaders can negotiate rapidly when they have the political will to do so—and when the British and the Czechs decide to step aside.

But did the leaders achieve anything useful to stem the crisis in the latest of their interminable summits? Their compact—now called the “treaty on stability, coordination and governance in the Economic and Monetary Union”, has as its main aim the imposition of balanced-budget rules on members.

This may to be worry that, at a time of widespread crisis, such pro-cyclical rules risk imposing too much austerity too widely, thus deepening the looming of recession and making it even harder to balance budgets.

Nevertheless, Angela Merkel hailed the treaty as a great success. Many others, though, dismiss the compact with so much faint praise. Even Mario Monti, these days everybody’s favourite Italian, thought the compact was little more than “a decorative song-bird”.

Germany parried demands, from Mr Monti and others, to enlarge the firewall by merging together the existing temporary European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the permanent new European Stability Mechanism (ESM). This would enlarge the fund from €500 billion to €750 billion. Mrs Merkel said the matter should be discussed in March, as decided in last December’s summit.

The British have decided not to be awkward about the compact, despite the falling-out at the previous summit.

Mr Cameron is under pressure from Eurosceptic backbenchers to wage legal warfare to prevent signatories to the pact from using EU institutions, such as the European Commission and the European Court of Justice.

That said, Mr Sarkozy and Mr Cameron are still sparring. The French president’s barb in a television interview a day earlier, when he mockingly said that Britain had “no industry left”, prompted Mr Cameron to rattle off a list of great British car companies—among them Honda, Toyota and Nissan (all Japanese).

Perhaps the most interesting dynamic was between France and Germany ahead of May’s French presidential elections in May. Mrs Merkel said that she would campaign for the re-election of Mr Sarkozy, saying he had done the same for her in the past.

Connie Hedegaard said: “EU Energy Efficiency Directive includes a commitment to retrofit a certain number of public buildings each year, improving insulation and stopping leaks”.”We have proposed a percentage of 3 percent a year, and that’s out of an employment perspective as well,”

“One of the few things that can create jobs very, very fast in Europe is if you actually doing something with retrofitting pipes, retrofitting energy systems, retrofitting houses – that creates jobs very, very quickly after you have adopted these kind of policies. There are not so many other issues that can do that.”

With Europe’s economy in the doldrums because of the euro zone debt crisis and unemployment at 9.8 percent in November, politicians are desperate for ways of providing growth but unwilling or unable to pay for a stimulus package.

Better insulation for Europe’s buildings would help a construction sector.

It’s estimated that that energy efficiency alone could generate 500,000 jobs in the years up to 2020. But EU also has other initiatives in the climate field where all in all there is the potential of creating 2 million new jobs up to 2020, if we get it right.

Cutting energy use is also an important policy aim because of the twin risks of environmental damage and reliance on expensive energy imports. The EU has put an embargo on oil imports from Iran from July, further squeezing its supplies.

The retrofitting work would be supported by the EU budget and would help European governments to save money in the future by cutting wasteful energy use, as well as boosting employment.

During the trilogue in the next March, the EU Istitutions would have to back the proposal, which the European Commission launched last autumn.

The current Danish EU presidency fixed the Energy Efficiency directive like the top legislative priority and it is determined to have the measure in place by the time its six month term ends in June.

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