Brussels - A key European Parliament committee on Thursday gave its backing to strong European Union limits on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) new cars should emit in a dramatic turnaround from the expected result.

At a stormy meeting, the parliament's environment committee decided that car makers selling their vehicles in the EU should make sure that the average CO2 emissions of the cars they sell should be no more than 120 grams per kilometre (g/km) in 2012.

Penalties for non-compliance should start at 20 euros (29.3 dollars) per car sold and per g/km over the limit in 2012, and rise to 95 euros per g/km in 2015, they said.

And the EU should bring in a further target of 95 g/km by 2020, they decided.

Ahead of the meeting, committee members had been widely expected to back a compromise proposal capping penalties at 50 euros per g/km and ruling that only the most efficient 70 per cent of cars should be covered in the first years of the scheme.

Environmental groups had slammed the compromise as both delaying and drastically weakening the original proposals from the European Commission, the EU's executive body.

But on the day, the committee voted down both of those amendments in what observers see as a severe blow to the automobile industry.

The proposed law is now set to go to the parliament's plenary session on October 20-23.

CO2 is the gas most closely linked with global warming, and experts estimate that cars alone account for 14 per cent of all EU CO2 emissions.

The EU has pledged to cut its total CO2 emissions to at least 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. (dpa)