EU climate target: Environmentalists welcome 90% CO2 reduction by 2040 with reservations

Brussels.- Environmental organizations and the Greens celebrated this Friday that EU leaders have cleared the way for the bloc to adopt a CO2 reduction target of 90% by 2040 compared to 1990, but questioned the "flexibilities" demanded by the EU-27.

In a statement, WWF expressed its concern about the ambiguous wording of the Council's conclusions (…) regarding the timing, scale, and quality of international offsets, which could dilute the overall ambition of the goal.

"The 90% target wasn't challenged by EU leaders, so it remains the only figure on the table. The question is how much of that reduction will actually be based on domestic emissions cuts rather than international offsets," said WWF's Head of Energy and Climate, Alex Mason.

CO2 reduction target for 2040

At the European summit held this Thursday in Brussels, the leaders of the Twenty-Seven EU countries called on the European Commission to provide "enabling conditions" for adopting a binding CO2 reduction target for 2040, as well as a "review clause" for the objectives in light of future technological advances and guarantees that competitiveness will not be undermined.

These general guidelines should be used by EU environment ministers to adopt the 90% target by 2040 at an extraordinary council meeting on November 4. This target must be endorsed by the European Parliament and would represent a linear trajectory with commitments to reduce carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by 55% by 2030 and achieve climate neutrality by mid-century.

Updated climate plans

This will allow the EU, albeit delayed, to submit its updated climate plans to the United Nations, with the resulting reduction in 2035, ahead of the COP30 summit to be held in November in Brazil, ten years after the Paris Agreement.

"It falls short of the commitment we needed before the COP. Instead, leaders are pushing for more omnibus (legislative simplification processes), loopholes like international pollution credits and the so-called 'review clause,'" Austrian Green MEP Lena Schilling said in a statement.

Loopholes and international credits

These "loopholes" refer to Brussels' idea of ​​having "international carbon credits" that would allow the purchase of emission rights in less industrialized countries, an initiative welcomed by the EU-27, or a softening of the implementation of the emissions trading scheme for buildings and road transport, the so-called ETS 2.

The EU-27 also called on the Commission to ensure that the reduction plans include "a clause for reviewing the 2040 target in light of the latest scientific evidence, technological advances, and changes in the challenges and opportunities for the EU's global competitiveness."

Striking a more optimistic tone, Sven Harmeling, head of climate for Europe at the Climate Action Network, welcomed the fact that the 90% target is on the table but called for it "not to become an empty shell riddled with loopholes and flexibilities, such as the inclusion of international credits, and for the dismantling of existing climate and environmental policy under a misguided and short-sighted ideology of deregulation."

Climate neutrality as a key objective

For his part, Neil Makaroff, director of the think tank Strategic Perspectives, welcomed the fact that the European Council had finally sent "a long-awaited signal to international businesses and partners that Europe is still on the path to climate neutrality."

Elisa Giannelli, an expert at the E3G environmental think tank, praised the leaders' conclusions as "rightly recognizing that the ecological transition and Europe's competitiveness are not opposing goals, but two sides of the same coin."

However, he added that "the strong emphasis on flexibility and simplification should not become a pretext for lowering ambition." EFEverde

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