Brussels is looking for tripling the amount of global renewable energy used by the end of this decade and doubling energy efficiency in line with the goals of the COP28 presidency.
The 27 EU countries have already set for themselves a horizon of 2050 to abolish "unabated" fossil fuels -- meaning those reliant on coal, oil and gas that do not have mechanisms to capture or store carbon.
That issue is expected to be bitterly fought over at the UN climate conference in Dubai, and is already the subject of strained debate between EU countries.
The negotiating mandate has to be unanimously adopted and will be the one the European Union will throw its weight behind when officials and leaders gather in Dubai from late November to mid-December for COP28.
Some European governments want the "unabated" label withdrawn or have strict conditions attached to the use of carbon capture technology, to prevent them being used to as justification for continued fossil-fuel burning.
"There's no alternative for driving down emissions across the board," the newly appointed EU commissioner for climate matters, Wopke Hoekstra, said.
"However some sectors are extremely hard to abate" and thus carbon-capture technology was needed "as part of the total solution space," he said.
France's energy transition minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher called such tech "of interest" but added that they should be reserved for sectors that were unable otherwise to decarbonise.
"The goal is to have a strong mandate where one has a strong opening negotiating position to obtain concrete results to reduce emissions in the oil sector, on coal, on financing," she said.
Spain's ecological transition minister Teresa Ribera, whose country was chairing the Luxembourg meeting, said carbon-capture technologies should be linked "to some sectors" only.
- 'Complicated' on fossil fuels -
Hoekstra said a global commitment to eliminating fossil fuels entirely would be "very complicated" as there is "a lot of tension" in a number of regions.
And, when it comes to an accord to be taken up by UN member countries, "it takes 192 to tango," he said.
Another topic the Europeans need to work through is whether their headline number for a reduction in the bloc's greenhouse gases by 2030 is 55 percent, compared to a 1990 baseline, or the 57 percent that it will de facto strive for under policies already adopted.
"If it comes to our legal obligation, it's quite clear that it frames on 55 percent," said European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic.
"But from our internal analysis, we know that we most probably are going to overachieve that, so we are looking at most probably 57 percent delivery. So I think that it would be good announcement for COP28," he said.
That would reinforce Europe's ambition to be a global leader on combating climate change, he and other officials said.
The 27 countries are also debating a possible timeline for ending subventions for fossil fuels in the world, again with divergent positions within the bloc.
And the ministers were to discuss setting up a "loss and damage" fund evoked in COP27 that is meant to compensate poorer countries as they shifted to greener energy production and use.
Hoekstra, in his confirmation hearings in the European Parliament in early October, had called for that fund to be financed from new mechanisms, such as international taxes on jet fuel or on sea transport, or from the carbon trading market.
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