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At 5 am on 21 April, after a night of negotiations, the EU's
governing bodies reached a provisional
agreement on the European Climate Law, four months after every
member state but Poland agreed to an earlier deal.
The political compromise is now set to be put into legal
language. It will set a series of milestones on the road to climate
neutrality by 2050. Under the law, the EU's intermediate target of
reducing net GHGs from their 1990 levels by at least 55% in 2030
compares with 40% under current rules.
The law will attempt to align with the EU's Paris Agreement
target, submitted in December. It now moves to an EU member state
representative body that ensures policy consistency, COREPER, and
then back to the European Parliament, for approval and adoption in
two to three weeks.
European parties officially backing the law include the
center-right European People's Party, Socialists & Democrats,
and liberal Renew Europe.
Officials leading negotiations saw it as a success in light of
an upcoming US-hosted climate summit taking place on 22-23 April.
"Europe… will be the first continent in the world [agreeing] to be
climate neutral by 2050. It is also a strong message to the world,
that will be important, two days before the Biden conference on
climate," said Portuguese Minister João
Pedro Matos Fernandes at a virtual press conference.
Despite the new 55% target, the law has been criticized for
undershooting a target of reducing net emissions by 60% or more by
2030, supported by the EU Parliament in a text adopted in October,
in line with the European Greens and European Free Alliance
party.
But some of those in the European Parliament that had originally
backed the 60% target have said on social media they are satisfied
with the compromise. The 55% is considered 57% by some calculations
by, for example, the European Parliament's rapporteur on the
Climate Law, Jytte Guteland.
Controversially, the 57% reduction figure includes a specific
amount of negative emissions from natural and manmade carbon sinks,
such as agricultural land and forests.
The EC will revise its regulations on land use to raise EU
carbon sinks to levels above 300 million mt CO2 equivalent by 2030,
which would "de facto correspond to a 2030 reduction
target of 57%," the EU Parliament said in a statement.
Prior targets had included all the sinks, and if the EU were to
have counted all of the carbon sinks again in the new target, it
would only have needed to reduce emissions by 52.8%, according to a
report by the Green Party's
shadow rapporteur on the Climate Law, Michael Bloss.
The proposed regulation will also create an independent advisory
board, taking after similar climate advisory bodies in France and
the UK, consisting of a rotating panel of 15 senior national
experts, with no more than two members from the same country, to
keep track of progress towards the climate target.
While there was near-unanimous approval for the creation of a
climate board, environmental groups such as CAN Europe and
Greenpeace criticized the target.
Some observers say the law is good -- considering the context.
"I know the parliament and some environmental groups wanted
something more ambitious. I think it is. If you look at the
details, it is going to be quite difficult for the European Union
as a whole to achieve these targets. So, I consider them to be
quite ambitious," Cambridge University Centre for European Legal
Studies' Markus Gehring said in an interview with IHS Markit.
The use of climate sinks is not the creative accounting green
groups have claimed, Gehring said. "I think it's well done. You can
reserve carbon stocks that are bound up in forestry over the long
term, then it makes good sense to also include what historically
were called 'LULUCFs' and the EC said they were going to reform the
legislation on these carbon sinks inside the EU. I don't see that
as a major danger to the reduction targets, and I don't think it's
an accounting trick," he said.
Diesel vehicles
The agreement is binding for the 27 member states, but each
state will have a different commitment because Sweden and Finland,
for example, aim to stop contributing to global warming much
earlier, Chair of the Environment Committee of the European
Parliament Pascal Canfin said in an
interview with French radio.
Dependent on coal for 70% of its power, Poland was the only
country not to fully agree to reach climate neutrality in December,
but it has been given until June to confirm its approval and
implementation, he said.
Canfin said the Climate Law would accelerate the deployment of
renewable energy and put an additional price on the carbon paid by
industries.
It was going to change, for example, the emissions standards for
cars, so that by 2035 it will no longer be possible to sell
gasoline and diesel vehicles. Sale of vehicles that run on diesel
is already set to be banned in France by 2040, and the UK plans to
ban it by 2030. "To give you an order of magnitude, we are going to
go 2.5 times faster in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in
the coming decade than in the past decade," said Canfin.
But as for whether all this will be enough to make the EU
Paris-Agreement-compliant, that assessment will have to wait until
the detail of the law is published, said Gehring.
EU ETS and fuel
Another major impact of the law is empowering the EU to act on
emissions in a wider range of regulatory activities than before,
said Gehring.
"We had a few quasi-legislative targets for the EU Emissions
Trading System (ETS) to reach a 40% reduction, and that was part of
the climate regulations. Now, we get a general Climate Law, which
covers all areas, and is economy-wide rather than just covering
major emitters or certain installations, as are covered in the
ETS," he said.
The fact that this is a law and not a directive also has legal
implications. "Fighting climate change has always been more of a
political kind of declaration. But the minute you make and adopt
legal rules, that could be enforceable. It changes the character of
the effort. And in my view, that is a really, really positive step
that the EU is taking," Gehring added.
The Climate Law is also set to enter into force more quickly
than the EU's directives: 30 days after publication, possibly as
soon as June, Gehring said.
While a directive would require a transition period of two to
four years, "this time, it doesn't need any implementation by the
member states, and is valid as law," he added.
Adoption of the law will likely mean a tightening of the EU ETS
to reach the new binding legislative target, lowering the bar on
fuel emissions. This may empower the EU when it looks to curb
emissions from fuel in certain sectors, like international
aviation, vehicles, shipping, and heating for buildings, although
road transport will be more difficult.
The law empowers the EU to move towards any of the options. "It
is unlikely that the ETS would expand to individual cars or road
transport in general. But there are discussions, and if it were to
run risks, and not fulfill its legislative target, then I think all
options would be on the table," said Gehring.
The EU might, with considerable difficulty, also follow the lead
of France and Germany in regulating fuel used to heat buildings
through the ETS. "The building, installation, and heat and
electricity use in individual houses is something that the EU will
have an eye on when moving forward," said Gehring.
Posted 21 April 2021 by Cristina Brooks, Senior Journalist, Climate and Sustainability