Insight
Moving back the finishing line: The EU’s progress on climate by Noah Gordon 23 September 2019
European leaders’ aim to go carbon neutral by 2050 will not happen without much tougher emissions curbs by 2030, and a sizeable increase in research and development funding. Climate change has moved to the top of the European political agenda, as the reality has started to sink in: rising sea levels, more frequent heat waves, droughts, floods and forest fires, increased water scarcity, reduced agricultural productivity in Southern Europe, more forced migration, and the extinction of species. The EU is projected to achieve its 2030 emissions targets, which it made in 2015 in its submission to the Paris climate agreement: a 40 per cent reduction in emissions from their level in 1990. (As of 2017, emissions were down by 22 per cent from 1990 levels – see Chart 1.) The EU has done much better than most other industrialised countries. US emissions have risen slightly since 1990, and global emissions continue to rise. Over the next few months, starting at today’s climate conference at the UN in New York, signatories to the Paris agreement will update their targets in light of the latest climate science. Under the 2015 UN Paris Agreement, countries do not commit to temperature targets. Instead they commit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an amount meant to be sufficient for the planet to reach its temperature target. And in order to keep global warming well below 2 degrees, which climate scientists believe is necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, the EU must significantly raise its 2030 target for emissions curbs. The Commission has said the target will be met if current EU-level policies “are fully implemented”. A European Commission analysis from November 2018, which quantified the extent to which already agreed EU policies would curb emissions, said greenhouse gas emissions would fall by 46 per cent from 1990 levels by 2030. A March 2019 study from the climate think-tank Sandbag, which took into account not only EU policies but also recently announced national coal phase-outs, forecasts a 50 per cent reduction. While there is always the potential for member-states to struggle with implementation, given political trends and advances in green technology, it would be surprising if the EU failed to hit its 40 per cent target.
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