The European climate targets can probably be tightened. For example, the EU has agreed on measures to capture CO2 in forests and swamps. As a result, the Union would be able to reduce CO2 emissions by 2030 not by 55 but by almost 57 percent.
The agreement “helps open the door to a higher climate goal”, says climate man Frans Timmermans of the European Commission.
In the fight against climate change, the EU also wants to use nature itself, which can process and retain a lot of CO2. By planting trees and keeping peat and swamp wet, for example. Negotiators from EU countries and the European Parliament have now agreed to remove 310 million tons of the greenhouse gas CO2, or a proportional amount of other gases, from the air by 2030 with such measures. There will be separate targets for each EU country to adhere to.
Countries that, for example, release CO2 into the atmosphere by cutting down bombs or draining pastures in peatlands must compensate for this with countermeasures. The climate is not going to get any worse. But from 2026, more CO2 must be captured than is released.
The agreement was the last thing the EU hoped to conclude before the climate summit in Egypt ended to be able to present itself as a climate precursor at COP27. However, in recent weeks, the Union has already agreed to ban petrol and diesel cars and national climate targets for member states.
The EU hopes to get other countries to tighten their climate targets at the summit. It aims to end the Union’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 on balance. For 2030, the EU has provisionally set the bar for a reduction of 55 percent compared to 1990. But there is room to increase this once the agreement concluded on Thursday night has been definitively approved by the member states and the European Parliament, says Timmermans.
Timmermans, the committee’s second man, also welcomes the “more precise supervision” of the new targets and rules. However, climate activists are still concerned about its opacity. And about the stretch, it has for member states to be able to make up for headwinds at a later date or in some other way.
