The European Commission on Thursday (17 September) defended its plan to bring carbon removals from agriculture, land use and forestry into the EU\u2019s updated climate target for 2030, saying this was in line with UNFCCC standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the logic and the methods applied by UNFCCC, they all include carbon sinks,\u201d said Frans Timmermans, the Commission vice-president in charge of climate policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is exactly what we have done at the European Commission,\u201d he told journalists at a press briefing. \u201cSo I think we\u2019re on solid ground here\u201d.<\/p>\n
Timmermans was speaking after the EU executive officially unveiled its plan to reduce the EU\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, up from 40% currently.<\/p>\n
The updated 2030 target, announced the day before by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, aims to put the EU in line with its commitments under the Paris Agreement and the bloc\u2019s broader objective of becoming the first \u201cclimate neutral\u201d continent in the world by 2050.
\n‘We can do it!’: EU chief announces 55% emissions reduction target for 2030
\nEuropean Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced plans on Wednesday (16 September) to target a 55% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 as part of a broader European Green Deal programme aimed at reaching \u201cclimate neutrality\u201d by mid-century.<\/p>\n
\u2018Accounting trick\u2019<\/p>\n
But environmental campaign groups denounced the Commission\u2019s plan to include carbon sinks in the target, saying this was \u201can accounting trick\u201d to meet the 2030 goals.<\/p>\n
\u201cRelying on forests to reach climate targets sends the wrong signal that it\u2019s OK to keep polluting because the land will absorb it,\u201d said Sam van den Plas, policy director at Carbon Market Watch, an environmental NGO.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Commission is greenwashing its own climate target: including carbon dioxide removals in the calculations means emissions will actually go down by a lot less. We\u2019re facing a climate emergency, and there isn\u2019t time for games,\u201d said Alex Mason from the WWF.<\/p>\n
In Europe, forests are currently a net carbon sink because they take in more carbon dioxide than they emit. On a global level, oceans and forests are the two biggest carbon sinks.<\/p>\n
But the capacity of European forests to absorb CO2 \u201chas been shrinking\u201d over the years, Timmermans warned, saying \u201cthe sink has to go back to its previous levels\u201d if Europe wants to reach climate neutrality and preserve biodiversity at the same time.<\/p>\n
If left unchecked, forest sinks could further decline to 225 million tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030, down from 300 million tons CO2 in 2010, the Commission says. According to the EU executive, the forests\u2019 declining capacity to absorb carbon dioxide is driven by \u201cfurther increases in harvesting\u201d and negative impacts from natural hazards such as fires and pests caused by a changing climate and growing demand for biomass.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really have to take care of our forests. It\u2019s not enough to say we\u2019ll plant 3 billion trees, we need to make sure our forests stay healthy and this is going to be a momentous task,\u201d Timmermans said.<\/p>\n
Environmental groups applauded the Commission\u2019s intention to restore healthy forests and ecosystems. But they pointed to inconsistencies with the EU\u2019s existing climate goal for 2030, which according to them, does not take carbon removals into account.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current EU target of \u2018at least 40%\u2019 agreed in 2014 does not include sinks,\u201d affirms Bert Metz, a climate scientist who co-chaired the mitigation working group of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 1997 to 2008.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncluding sinks means that the new 55% target would effectively be less than 50% in the current target\u2019s terms,\u201d he wrote in an opinion piece for EURACTIV.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to restore Europe\u2019s forests and protect and restore our precious ecosystems, but that must be on top of greenhouse gas reductions, not instead,\u201d he insisted, saying the 55% target\u00a0 \u201cmust be a real, absolute reduction,\u201d not a net target that takes carbon removals into account.
\nHow the EU could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on climate
\nThe European Commission\u2019s commendable move to aim for emission reductions of \u201cat least 55%\u201d by 2030 risks being completely undermined if the target also takes into account \u201creductions and removals\u201d from forest growth and tree planting schemes, warns Bert Metz.
\n53% without carbon removals<\/p>\n
Timmermans strongly rejected the NGO\u2019s accusation that the net target is an accounting trick.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really dispute the idea that this would in fact mean only 50% reduction,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t understand the logic, carbon sinks play a role, it takes CO2 out of the atmosphere \u2013 isn\u2019t that what we want to achieve?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly believe there is no problem with that,\u201d Timmermans added, saying all that matters is that the EU achieves its 2030 climate goal.<\/p>\n
Officials who briefed the press afterwards told a different story however, and did recognise that the 55% target would be lower by two percentage points without carbon removals. This would translate into an emissions reduction target of 53%, not 55.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 53% is calculated without taking into account the removals, and the 55% is calculated with removals,\u201d the official said. And using the EU\u2019s current method to calculate carbon sinks \u201cwould shave away probably about half of those 2 percentage points,\u201d he explained, suggesting the target would effectively be around 54% using today\u2019s carbon accounting rules.<\/p>\n
Green campaigners who analysed the Commission\u2019s impact assessment on the 2030 target came to different conclusions, however. Depending on the scenarios, the effect of including carbon sinks \u201cvaries from just over 2% to nearly 5%, depending on whether you think the sink will be at the low end (225 million tonnes) or the high end (340 million tonnes),\u201d said Alex Mason from the WWF.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis makes clear that including sinks in the 2030 target makes a significant difference \u2013 it means other sectors such as buildings, transport and agriculture won\u2019t have to cut emissions by as much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mason also insisted that the EU\u2019s current 2030 climate target does not take carbon removals into account, and accused the Commission of trying to cover up the change in carbon accounting rules.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Commission is trying to downplay the significance of this change \u2013 and appears even to have altered text on its website in order to imply that the 40% target has always been a net target,\u201d Mason told EURACTIV.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s clear that the 55% target Ursula von der Leyen and Frans Timmermans have been trumpeting is not what it seems, and is even further from the 65% cut in emissions that science demands.\u201d<\/p>\n
Timmermans himself seemed to admit that carbon sinks were a new element in the EU\u2019s climate target calculation, saying the Commission drew its figures on carbon removals from the most recent findings of the UNFCCC.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could wonder why we didn\u2019t include it in the -40% target at the time, because carbon sink is an important element in all of this,\u201d Timmermans said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe target is what counts, we use every method to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The European Commission on Thursday (17 September) defended its plan to bring carbon removals from agriculture, land use and forestry into the EU\u2019s updated climate target for 2030, saying this was in line with UNFCCC standards. \u201cIf you look at the logic and the methods applied by UNFCCC, they all include carbon sinks,\u201d said Frans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572,5571],"tags":[12426,14441],"supplier":[2317],"class_list":["post-79332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","category-co2-based","tag-climatechange","tag-policy","supplier-european-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79332"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=79332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}