BRUSSELS: Eradicating greenhouse gases from power stations and cars, trucks and aviation must be Europe's next policy move to tackle climate change, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Wednesday.

The European Union last year agreed to cut emissions of the main global warming gas, carbon dioxide, to a fifth below 1990 levels by 2020 -- the world's most ambitious climate policy. It now aims to go further.

"We need to come up with concrete policies to decarbonise our electricity supply and transport fuels to transform the grid," Barroso told reporters. "That's the concrete task of the next Commission, but it is not too early to be thinking about this," he said.

A new Commission is expected to take office later this year. Barroso was speaking after talks with British climate economist Nicholas Stern and Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the United Nations climate panel. They discussed plans for the Copenhagen summit on a global deal to fight climate change later this year, as well as longer term measures and action to be taken after the summit. "We need to grasp this enormous opportunity to mainstream climate protection into all our policy areas," Barroso said.