Poor national enforcement of energy labelling and other product rules facilitates “free-riders” and undermines the voluntary approach.

• Positive incentives needed to promote consumer uptake of state-of-the-art products to realise huge energy-efficiency potential and help cut CO2 emissions.

The European Union’s top energy official was in Washington to push European hopes for greater cooperation on global warming and joint EU-U.S. efforts for increasing energy efficiency and security of supplies.

Australian PM John Howard didn’t like it, but EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas criticized the two major Kyoto holdouts for slowing down the whole world.

An interactive map allowing exact calculation of the solar electricity potential of any given location in Europe and its neighbouring regions will help determine each member state’s share of solar power in the EU’s overall 20% EU renewables target.

In hopes of increasing efforts to fight climate change, Germany discusses possibilities for the United States to join in the European Union’s carbon trading scheme.

“Nine northeastern US states plan to start a system in 2009 while California, five other states and the Canadian province of British Columbia are planning a regional scheme.”

At the World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden’s Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt urges countries like the United States, China and India to commit to action against global warming. He states that the European Union alone “is not enough to make change.”

“Groups including Greenpeace, the Renewable Energy Association, Friends of the Earth and the New Economics Foundation reacted angrily to revelations in the Guardian that government officials had secretly acknowledged that the UK would struggle to meet the EU target of 20% renewables by 2020 and had suggested it be reinterpreted to make it easier to achieve.”

“A long-awaited trading link between carbon markets in the European Union and under the UN-sponsored Kyoto Protocol on global warming should be completed in November, EU and UN officials said on Thursday.”

A proposal to include airlines in the European Union’s emissions trading scheme is delayed to 2012.

“The European Union plans to set up an alliance with the world’s poorest countries to help them cope with growing problems related to climate change, the bloc’s executive said on Tuesday.”