Green with envy, the U.S. Senate is trying to catch up with Europe’s cap and trade pioneers – even as the Europeans themselves are having second thoughts.

Europe Daily reports today that a study by the Swedish Institute for Growth Policy Studies (ITPS) – a government think tank – concludes that “current EU climate policies are likely to adversely affect businesses and households throughout the bloc, stifling economic growth.”

“An EU proposal to slash 20 per cent off greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 is too reliant on taxation and carbon trading schemes, the report argues, and will cause excessively high prices for petrol and electricity,” continues the Daily article.

Conservative U.S. think tanks like Heritage have come to similar conclusions about the possible effects of Lieberman-Warner. But ITPS’s study – representing one of Europe’s greenest governments — has the added clout of making its assessment based on a decade of real-world experience with the flawed legislation that L-W wants to mimic.