EU pledges billions for post-Kyoto climate deal

European Commissioner for Environment Stavros Dimas addresses a news conference on EU climate and energy policy at the EC headquarters in Brussels May 29, 2009.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe could pay poor countries up to 15 billion euros ($22 billion) a year by 2020 to persuade them to help battle climate change, the European Union's executive arm said on Thursday.

Developing countries say industrialized nations should shoulder most of the cost of tackling a problem they caused in the first place, creating a big stumbling block in negotiations ahead of a global climate meeting in Copenhagen in December.

Africa has warned it will veto any deal that is not generous enough, and the 27-country European Union is trying to calculate a fair payment to break the deadlock.

"Now we must break the impasse in the Copenhagen negotiations," EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said in a statement.

"That is why the (European) Commission is putting forward a balanced blueprint for financing the necessary action," he said.

The developing world will face costs of around 100 billion euros a year by 2020 to cut emissions from industry and to help deal with the droughts, disease and crop failures that climate change is forecast to exacerbate.

Taxes on global shipping, aviation and industry could help, leaving a gap of 22-55 billion euros to be filled from the public purse. The EU could contribute 2-15 billion euros of that, the Commission said.

But environmentalists said the figure for the EU was too low.

"The EU is trying to get away with leaving a tip rather than paying its share of the bill to protect the planet's climate," Greenpeace campaigner Joris den Blanken said.

The Commission had previously indicated the EU might pay 13-24 billion euros, but retracted those numbers after deciding the United States should carry a heavier financial burden to compensate for its relatively modest emissions cuts.

The EU also slashed billions of euros off its budget for paying for emissions cuts in poor countries after deciding local businesses should finance their own energy-saving measures because such investments can ultimately pay for themselves.

(Reporting by Pete Harrison; Editing by Dale Hudson)