UK wants road and rail emissions cap[fr][de] 

In advance of the upcoming 8-9 March European Council meeting, the UK minister said that Britain would favour an expansion of the emissions-trading scheme. The UK is expected to fall short of its own target to cut emissions by 20% by 2010, with emissions from transport now rising faster than all other industrial sectors - emissions rose 10% in the period 1990-2004, and now account for 24% of all UK CO2 emissions.

The Environment Secretary wants the ETS to cover more sectors, more greenhouse gases, to run over a longer period and for increased auctioning of allowances, according to the Financial Times.

"The time is right to look at what it would mean for the UK  to create over a period of 15 to 20 years a post-oil economy", Milliband will say in a speech at Cambridge University. He is expected to call also for "new policy instruments" to tackle climate change at the EU heads of state meeting on Thursday.

Warning of the upcoming "humanitarian emergency" of global warming, Miliband will call for increased use of new technologies such as carbon capture and storage, biofuels and electric cars.

However, an independent scientific audit of the UK's climate-change policies by University College London's Environment Institute indicates that the UK government will miss the target it set for a 30% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, and according to the report, will not meet the target until 2050.