Carbon emissions setback

Gordon Brown's proposal for funding technology that would capture and bury carbon emissions underground suffered a significant blow at the EU summit on Thursday.

The European Council disagreed with the Prime Minister over the allocation of funds earned from selling carbon emission allowances to manufacturing industries.

Brown's plan calls for 500 million pollution permits to provide as much as €15bn (£13.5bn)  for testing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at a dozen plants by 2015. The council's proposal only allocates money from 150 million permits for research at 12 sites. Brown and other leaders believe this amount is insufficient to test the full range of CCS technologies.

The European Parliament has already proposed that 350 million permits should be set aside to provide €7.9bn of support funding.

Before the European Council reached their agreement on Thursday, Chris Davies (Lib Dem, UK), the European Parliament’s rapporteur and chief CCS negotiator, announced he intended to cancel a meeting planned for Saturday, at which final details were to be agreed between European Parliament members and Member State governments, if the council could not agree on the 350 million figure.