European leaders today launched a green revolution, after agreeing to take on ambitious climate change goals including legally-binding targets for switching to renewable energy sources such as wind, wave and solar power.

The landmark deal, which came at the end of an EU summit in Brussels, saw leaders pledge to cut overall levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent from 1990 levels by the year 2020 - vowing to boost the figure to 30 per cent if the rest of the developed world does the same.

They also agreed a separate binding target of obtaining at least 20 per cent of all Europe’s energy needs from renewable sources by the same date.

The agreement came after hours of wrangling over how far European countries should go in leading the new global environmental campaign.

Expert View

Today's deal allows Mrs Merkel to challenge other global players to match the EU's commitment

David Charter

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Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said the agreement would usher in a new era in the fight against global warming.

“It has been possible to, as it were, open the door to a new dimension of European co-operation for years to come in the area of energy and combatting climate change.”

The second part of the deal - addressing the issue of renewable energy - was said to be the most difficult - convincing poorer countries still heavily reliant on the carbon economy to commit themselves to such tough aims.

The answer was a compromise summit deal on “burden-sharing” - allowing nations such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to contribute less to the new green agenda than others.

But to achieve the target of changing Europe’s energy mix to an overall 20 per cent from renewable sources as planned, the deal means better-placed countries such as Germany will have to do more.

The compromise was enough to win round France and Finland, concerned that their relatively high use of low-carbon nuclear energy should let them off the hook too.

EU leaders were determined today not to let last-minute wrangling send the wrong political signal about the importance of tackling climate change. Tony Blair emerged from the meeting to declare: “This summit has seen Europe embark on a bold and ambitious move on climate change.”

The Prime Minister said it had been a “groundbreaking” European meeting. Last night he spoke of the urgent need for Europe to show leadership on one of the most pressing political issues of the day.

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