The European Union must consider raising its emissions reduction targets to 30% as a key part of measures to encourage investment and job creation in clean technologies or risk losing out to competitors from China and elsewhere, EU climate chief Connie Hedegaard said Tuesday.

The EU's current target of a 20% reduction in emissions by 2020 is likely to result in a lower carbon price and less investment in low-carbon technologies, such as wind and solar energy, carbon capture and storage and cleaner burning fuels, while other countries continue to develop them.

"If we continue with business as usual--the 20% target--then up to 2020 we won't see a substantially higher price of carbon (than now). If we can see that already in 2010, then we need to do something," Hedegaard told reporters at a briefing in London .

The current carbon price of around EUR16 a metric ton is considered at least EUR14/ton too low to encourage investment in low-carbon technologies.

The European Commission is currently working on an assessment of the costs and impacts to its member countries and sectors of increasing the target to 30%. The assessment is expected to be completed by early June so it can be discussed at an EU environment ministers' meeting June 11 and then taken up again by heads of state sometime in the autumn, Hedegaard said.

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