The European Union recognised the urgent need to tackle climate change. It also adopted a negotiating position of a 15% greenhouse gas emissions reduction target for industrialised countries by the year 2010, down from 1990 levels. To facilitate European Union Member States attainment of this objective, the Commission, through its 1997 Communication on the Energy Dimension of Climate Change, identified a series of energy actions, including a prominent role for renewables. Together with the binding 20% renewable energy target by 2020, the EU also adopted a target of 20% improvement in the EU’s energy efficiency as well as a 20% greenhouse gas reduction target (respectively 30%, if other industrialised countries commit to similar ambitions) by 2020.