This should please renewables groups, who had criticized the EC for not setting specific EU targets for renewable power, heating and cooling in its draft January proposals. Instead, the EC opted for a 20% general but binding EU renewables target, to be shared between the 27 EU member states, and for this to include a specific and binding 10% biofuels target, to be met by each member state.

It was big news in March when EU leaders, led by Germany's Angela Merkel, agreed in principle to be legally bound by these targets. And if the EC can persuade member states to set their own binding sectoral targets in formal national action plans, that must surely focus their thoughts on exactly how and what they are going to achieve.

But binding targets in themselves are no guarantee of results. If the support needed to reach these targets is too expensive, some member states may decide that it would be cheaper simply to pay a European Court of Justice fine for missing them, according to one Brussels insider.

Such an outcome would be highly embarrassing for the EC, which is trying to push EU member states to work together to lead the rest of the world on renewable and other low-carbon energy technologies.

And the prospect of such an economic opt-out may even be making some of the more circumspect member states more amenable to signing up for the targets in the first place, making an agreement on targets not as ground-breaking as it first appears.

The next step is for the EC to adopt a final version--including the split of the 20% EU target between member states--of its draft renewables law on January 23. But the targets themselves seem likely to be overshadowed by the more controversial and divisive questions of financial support and trading in the ensuing debate.

--Siobhan Hall, EU news editor Platts EU Energy