In Britain, climate charges add 19 percent to the electricity prices that large manufacturers pay, according to Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, which represents heavy industry. That helps make industrial processes that are heavy users of electricity, like aluminum smelting or steel making, endangered species in Britain.

Europe’s energy policies were conceived in a very different era, the early to mid-2000s and even before, when economic growth was robust and there seemed to be lots of leeway to add a few euros onto the cost of electricity, if that might help combat climate change.

In Europe today, to take only a couple of examples, steel production is down about 30 percent since before the financial crisis, and new car sales hit their lowest level last year since 1995. It is hard not to conclude that economic activity like manufacturing is decamping and moving to places like Asia and, increasingly, the United States.

European energy policy makers do not seem to have figured out that the world has changed. Britain, for instance, has just instituted a carbon tax on top of E.U.-wide carbon charges. The effort to raise the carbon price on the E.T.S. while Cyprus was melting down is another sign of tin-eared European policy making.

The vote against the changes to the E.T.S. could prove a wake-up call. Europe is probably going to achieve its objective of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 — mainly because the recession has cut industrial production and even driving. Now comes the harder part: cutting emissions 90 percent or so by 2050. Baby steps like a mini carbon tax are not going to get Europe there, analysts say.

A real debate on energy may be in the cards for the first time in years. “We are in the realpolitik of climate change now, where costs and competitiveness do matter,” said Fabien Roques, another analyst at IHS CERA.

“Our whole energy policy needs to be rethought. We don’t need to go for hell for leather in one go to meet targets,” said Ann Robinson, head of consumer affairs at uSwitch, a British company that provides consumer advice.

Ms. Robinson argues that instead of rushing huge investments into largely unproven and enormously expensive technologies like offshore wind, a phased approach would be preferable and would leave time for scientific advances that might produce cheaper and more effective solutions. Britain, where the average annual household energy bill has doubled to about £1,335, or $2,040, since 2006, is approaching a “tipping point” where large numbers of people decide to “switch off heat permanently,” she said.