Connie Hedegaard, the European Commissioner for climate change, has said she is seeking to extend the EU’s 2020 renewable energy targets to 2030.

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, she appears to be making the move following intensive lobbying from the gas industry which is urging the Commission to consider gas production over renewable energies, according to the Guardian.

“We should be discussing a renewable energy target for 2030. We need to have ambitious targets. It would be one way to send a long-term price signal for renewable energy – that renewable energy is not just going to stop growing after 2020,” she said.

Read the full interview here and return to this blog for further reporting soon…

Offshore wind energy in Germany took a huge leap forward today after Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, officially opened the country’s first offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea.

The farm – known as Baltic 1 – is built by Energie Baden-Württemberg (EnBW) and consists of 21 2.3MW turbines which together will be able to power the equivalent of 50,000 households.

Politicians who are reluctant to accept that wind power and other renewables could be the driving force behind Europe achieving a low-carbon future in the next 40 years should read a new report that says the nuclear industry is in decline.

Published by the Worldwatch Institute in Washington D.C. a global environmental research organisation, and with the support of the Greens-EFA party in the European Parliament, the 84-page report noted that annual capacity additions of renewables have been outpacing nuclear start-ups for the past 15 years.