In climate fight, EU lawmakers back stricter emission caps

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union lawmakers stepped up the fight against global warming Wednesday by requiring deeper emission cuts from power plants, factories and planes in the EU and by endorsing an unprecedented import tax.

The European Parliament advanced draft climate legislation that would slash the EU greenhouse gases by at least 55% in 2030 compared with 1990 rather than by a previously agreed 40%.

The legislation also includes a tool that would allow the EU to raise the prices of some imported goods -- including steel and aluminum -- that are spared the climate-protection costs faced by manufacturers in the 27-nation bloc.

The overall goal is to put the EU on track to become climate-neutral in 2050 and to prod other major polluters, including the United States and China, to follow suit.

Final approval of the legislative package, which has been on the table since July 2021, would require the European Parliament to iron out differences with the bloc’s national governments over various details, a process likely to last several more months.

“We are doing a big step for the climate,” German lawmaker Peter Liese, who helped steer the package through the EU assembly in Brussels, said. “We are doing the right thing.”

The EU is seeking to maintain a leadership role in the worldwide battle against the increasingly frequent and intense heat waves, storms and floods caused by global warming. A key United Nations climate conference is scheduled for November in Egypt.

The more ambitious EU climate legislation is part of a clean-energy push that has gained political momentum as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with the bloc pledging to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels no later than 2027.

The EU has agreed to ban imports of Russian coal starting in August and to...