Environment watchdogs rejected Europe's 2030 greenhouse gas-curbing plan as inadequate today but the UN climate chief hailed it as a "positive" step towards a new international pact against global warming.
Traditionally a pacesetter at UN climate talks, the European Union has come under mounting pressure from poorer, vulnerable countries to beef up its pledges to cut heat-trapping carbon emissions.
Today, the European Commission, the 28-nation bloc's executive, proposed a binding reduction in greenhouse gases of 40 percent by 2030 over 1990 levels.
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Renewables should account for at least 27 percent of the total energy mix by 2030, it said. This overall goal would be binding on the EU but not national governments.
"(Europe's pledge) is the benchmark for other countries. It is the first party out of the gate with an offer," Jennifer Morgan, climate director at the World Resources Institute in Washington, told AFP.
"It goes in the right direction, but it is not there yet," she said.
"That 40 per cent is just at the bottom of what scientists are recommending."
Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), welcomed the announcement as a "positive signal for (a) meaningful 2015 agreement."
UN members have vowed to conclude a new global climate pact in Paris in December 2015.
The deal, to take effect from 2020, will seek to limit average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.
The Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), grouping island nations threatened by rising seas, was critical.
"The lack of ambition demonstrated in the EU's 2030 policy framework is disappointing," the group's lead negotiator, Olai Uludong, said in an email.
"If this is accepted as a starting point for tackling the climate crisis then we certainly have a lot of work to do to ensure the world reaches an agreement by 2015 that is commensurate with the scale of the challenge we face.
