Britain has been accused of trying to wreck Europe's plan to tackle climate change by lobbying to remove aviation from renewable energy targets.
Leaked documents from the council of the European Union show that the UK is exerting strong pressure on other EU governments. The argument being used is that biofuels made from plants or algae will not be ready for use as commercial aviation fuel until after 2020.
EU leaders pledged last year to generate 20% of all energy from renewable sources but if aviation, which contributes up to 9% of all greenhouse emissions in Europe, is omitted from the EU calculations at a meeting of energy ministers next week, it will significantly reduce the overall target and make it harder to tackle climate change.
Last night, in an unusual move, an adviser to the EU Industry Committee openly stated that British civil servants were leading the attempt by several countries including Cyprus, Italy and Malta to undermine the EU's renewable energy commitments.
Luxembourg MEP Claude Turmes, who denied that the leaked documents came from his office, said: "Britain is leading the attempt to undermine the climate change directive. Gordon Brown promised that the UK would not attempt to cut the EU 20% renewables target.
"Now UK civil servants from the Department of Business, enterprise and regulatory reform have a different strategy and are pushing for cuts. A government that is supposedly committed to tackle climate change must not try to kill the essence of this directive."
The document, seen by the Guardian, states that "member states want the aviation sector to be excluded from the denominator used to calculate the overall target. They consider that in the present state of technology we cannot expect it to be possible for biofuels that can replace kerosene to be certified for commercial aviation by 2020".
This was disputed by Virgin Atlantic. "We expect to run 5% of our fleet on biofuels, and 10% by 2020," said a spokesman. On Thursday, other aviation companies joined Virgin in committing to a similar shift to biofuels by 2020.
Britain has the largest aviation industry in Europe. If it succeeds in having it exempted, it stands to reduce by nearly 12% the amount of renewable energy it will need to generate by 2020.
Earlier this year the government set out what is considered to be an ambitious but achievable £100 billion commitment to renewables by 2020. An energy white paper, now passing through parliament, seeks to make Britain the first country in the world committed to 60% cuts in emissions.
Environment groups said that if Britain removed aviation from Europe's commitments it would open the door for other countries to plead special cases for their most polluting industries and render the directive nearly meaningless.
Robin Webster, Friends of the Earth's energy campaigner accused business minister John Hutton of trying to wreck the EU renewables deal: "His special pleading for the aviation industry could unravel this priceless agreement. It's time Brown stepped in and saved Britain's reputation in Brussels."
He added: "The government is working behind the scenes to sabotage Europe's renewable energy plans. This short sighted approach will leave families facing spiralling fuel prices and saddle the country with a multi-billion pound bill for dealing with the consequences of climate change."
This is the third time that Dberr officials have been exposed by the Guardian trying to undermine EU renewables energy targets. Last year Gordon Brown reacted angrily to other leaked documents showing that Britain was trying to persuade EU countries to set lower renewable targets.
The latest papers seen by the Guardian also show Britain trying to water down a series of renewable energy proposals in other areas. DBerr officials want to change a pledge that all new and refurbished buildings should be fitted with renewable energy sources like solar or wind power. Instead, countries would only have to increase "gradually" the minimum level of energy from renewable sources.
In addition, the UK is pressing for countries to be allowed to choose the speed at which they introduce renewable energy and is eager to allow large projects started before 2020 to be included.
These proposals would allow governments pass on the necessity to switch to renewables to future administrations and could allow them to start major projects as late as 2019 and claim credit for them even if they were not finished for a decade or more.
It further wants to change the rules that would give renewable electricity projects priority access to national grids.
Last week other leaked papers showed that Britain wanted Brussels to offset more domestic carbon savings through investment in clean projects in the developing world.
The move would let firms and countries import more carbon credits to count against their pollution targets. It would allow Europe to make less effort to cut its pollution, while keeping it on course to meet its target of reducing carbon emissions by 20% by 2020.
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