The Energy Policy for Europe drawn up by the European Commission is an extraordinary document: dreamily ambitious where it should be cautious; timid where it should have been bold; and evasive in confronting countries’ reluctance to allow competition.

It picks a target for the EU overall of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by a fifth by 2020, compared with their levels in 1990.

It seems to have reached the target by considering what is desirable for slowing down climate change, and for persuading other countries to join in, with a particularly keen eye on the US, China and India.

Those are reasonable motives — but they take less account of what Europe is likely to be able to do. Only Sweden and Britain are on course to meet the less demanding targets of the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012, without bringing in any new measures. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Irish Republic, Italy, Portugal and Spain are not on track at all.

Those differences are due to quirks of each country’s industrial history. Britain found the targets easy because of its replacement of coal-fired power stations with cleaner gas ones, even though that was motivated by cost; Germany benefited from cleaning up the filth spewed out by East German power plants and factories; France’s dependence on nuclear power, which emits much less greenhouse gas, gave it an easier ride.

It may be that the task of helping Eastern and Central Europe to modernise makes the targets more achievable than they seem, but the analysis does not spell this out.

The timing at least is perfect: the fight that Russia has picked a fight with Belarus has reminded Europe of the need for energy security, even if slumping oil prices, in an exceptionally warm winter, are calming anxieties about cost.

It is the means, inevitably, that are more questionable. The Commission wants a binding target on countries of a fifth of all energy use to come from renewables. This represents a huge increase, and an expensive one. The report puts the cost of onshore wind power at between €35 per MWh and €175/MWh, and that of offshore between €50 and €170/MWh.

The report reckons that achieving a 20 per cent share for renewables would add €18 billion or about 6 per cent to the EU’s energy import bill in 2020. In comparison, coal-fired power stations cost as little as €30/MWh to run and nuclear (a light-water reactor) about €40/MWh (the details are spelt out in a useful set of annexes).

Despite these competitive costs for nuclear power, the Commission is coy about recommending it, saying that each country must make its own decision. But its own analysis makes clear that Europe will face a more expensive future, and one more damaging to climate change, if Germany and Britain do not replace old nuclear plants.

The report dodges the failure of many countries to open up their markets to competition, which may boost innovation. But its most interesting recommendation is for far more investment in capturing the carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations. This not only offers a way of helping Europe meet such targets, but a way of persuading China and the US, each very reliant on coal, that they can still join in a battle against climate change.

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