Sweden described the Copenhagen climate change summit as a "disaster" and a "great failure" yesterday, before a meeting of European Union environment ministers to discuss how to rescue the process.

The EU went to Copenhagen with the hope of achieving a broad commitment to at least a 20 per cent cut in carbon emissions below 1990 levels within 10 years, but that and other firm goals failed to emerge in the final accord.

"Ministers are going to meet today (Tuesday) to discuss, of course, how to proceed after this disaster we really had in Copenhagen," Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren told reporters as he and other ministers gathered for the meeting in Brussels.

Mr Carlgren was to chair the talks as Sweden currently holds the EU presidency.

"I expect us to discuss both how to continue... but also elaborate on possibilities for alternative ways to work now, because it was a really great failure and we have to learn from that."

The two-week, UN-led conference ended on Saturday with a non-legally binding agreement to limit global warming to a maximum of 2˚C over pre-industrial times, but did not lay out how to achieve that.

Despite months of preparation and strenuous international diplomacy, the talks boiled down to an inability of the world's two largest emitters, the US and China, to agree on headline fixed targets.