Too much emphasis on emission targets: Chu

LONDON (Reuters) - Energy Secretary Stephen Chu said on Tuesday that setting exact targets for carbon dioxide emissions had led to an "over-obsession" with numbers, as the United States moved closer to overhauling its energy policy.

The comment came less than a week after a congressional panel approved President Barack Obama's landmark draft bill on climate change, bringing it closer to debate in Congress.

"There was a great deal of discussion on the Kyoto targets, and I'm not really sure which fraction of the countries that took part in that actually met their targets," Chu, a Nobel laureate for physics, said at a conference in London. "In terms of the targets, whether it's 17 percent or 20 or 25 percent, I think there's perhaps ... an over-obsession on these percentages."

The Waxman-Markey Bill calls for cutting U.S. carbon emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 -- far short of the European Union's target of bringing emissions to 20 to 30 percent below their 1990 level by the end of next decade.

Developing nations led by China and India are calling for even deeper cuts in rich economies, arguing that 200 years of industrialization made them more responsible for the problem.

At the heart of the global warming debate, these targets will receive special scrutiny in December when world leaders meet in Copenhagen to discuss a new deal on climate change that will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which the U.S. did not sign.

On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told Reuters that the emissions target touted in Obama's climate change bill did not go far enough to cut greenhouse gases.

The world could not wait for the United States to set its domestic rules -- the Waxman-Markey bill could move toward a vote in the Congress by August -- before agreeing a deal in December, he added.

Chu said the United States, the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, would have to "move first" in cutting emissions despite the fact that China and India want rich countries to cut their emissions more deeply than poorer ones.

China and other developing countries have called for the U.S. to cut its emissions by 25-40 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels. The United States wants rich and poor countries to share the burden of fighting climate change.

"We cannot use China as a reason not to act, it is no longer a reason not to go forward," he said. "China's leadership knows full well how serious climate change will be for their country."