BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES
Weekly analysis with Sam Morgan
A brand new expert panel of scientists, assembled to advise the EU on how to prevent climate oblivion, has published its first recommendations. Will Brussels and the governments that bash it listen?
The EU has emission reduction targets for 2030 and 2050. In just seven years time, greenhouse gases need to fall 55% compared with 1990 levels, before being completely neutralised by mid-century.
Twenty years is a big chunk of time and requires a milestone halfway in order to bridge that 55% to net-zero gap. That is why EU officials are now working on a 2040 emissions target to help align the climate action trajectory.
An advisory board that was set up to deal with climate issues just like this has weighed in on what that 2040 target should look like. But don’t hold your breath for their sound reasoning to be adopted anytime soon.
BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES includes weekly analysis not found anywhere else, as Sam Morgan helps you make sense of what is happening in Brussels. If you want to receive Brussels Behind the Scenes straight to your inbox every week, subscribe to the newsletter here.
When the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change was set up in 2021 to provide independent environmental advice, there were big hopes that it would take the pressure off the European Commission and lead to much more effective climate lawmaking.
The UK’s Climate Change Committee, for example, sets carbon budgets and has a rather significant say over what green policies Britain adopts. The EU equivalent was born of the same logic and ethos.
This week, the board has published one of its first major contributions to the EU’s climate policy debate, with an in-depth study into what the bloc’s 2040 emissions reduction target should look like.
What the independent experts propose is rather radical, at least compared to what the Commission has suggested in the past.
According to its number-crunching, oil imports would have to decrease 50-100% and fossil gas would have to be cut 35-100%. Big cuts to the amount of nitrogen fertiliser used in agriculture would also have to be made.
Coal and gas in power generation will have to be all-but eliminated, while carbon removals through biological and technological means will have to be ramped up. The board does its best to emphasise that the amount needed will be much lower if energy savings are made.
Back in 2018 when the Commission was crafting its 2050 net-zero plan, there were a couple of pathways under consideration, one of which was the 90-95% cut that the climate board now proposes for 2040.
Although the EU executive narrowed it down to just the climate neutrality option, which eventually became law, its top officials were adamant that controversial issues like meat consumption and car use would not be touched.
That is because, according to one high-ranking official your Behind the Scenes columnist talked to at the time, the Commission would not open that particular Pandora’s Box as every tabloid in Europe would write ‘Brussels is planning to take away your steaks’.
You can see their point, especially now that the EU executive has firmly branded itself a geopolitical Commission rather than a technocratic body that just looks at the data and acts accordingly.
That task has been farmed out to the climate change board and they have had no qualms at all about tackling the meat consumption issue. In the 2040 plan, the panel talks of a gradual move towards diets that have much less meat in them.
Plant-based consumption means that there is a significantly reduced demand for livestock and, perhaps as importantly, the feed that is needed to raise them. Deforestation reduces as a result, meaning more carbon sinks to absorb emissions.
Spelled out like that, it is all rather logical rather than ideological.
Brutal reality
Europe loves a culture war though doesn’t it. This week’s farcical European Parliament vote on nature restoration showed that logic does not hold sway over policymaking and that politicians will revolt against even the most scientifically-sound climate plans.
Winning elections is all that matters to some politicians. That is hardly a radical statement but the time between votes in which policies can actually be made seems to be shrinking with each passing political cycle.
We are a year out from the 2024 EU poll and electioneering is already well underway. With all of the lost time caused by the pandemic, Russia’s invasion and the months needed to set up a new Commission and Parliament, 2030 looks awfully close.
It means that the 2040 target does not have any smooth ground on which to land. Emmanuel Macron has helped see to that by talking about ‘regulatory pauses’ and blocking an agreement on renewable energy by stubbornly sticking to nuclear power ideology.
Greed is also a leviathan that stands in the way. Some of the world’s top oil companies have announced that they are rolling back their green pledges and production cuts in order to generate even more profit.
There are plenty of paladins to fight these monsters, including mega-cheap renewables like solar, growing public frustration with climate inaction and, unfortunately, fresh temperature records and ever more frequent natural disasters.
Copernicus — the EU’s Earth observation programme, not the 15th Century Polish astronomer — confirmed this week that the days in June so far have breached the 1.5 degrees Celsius benchmark enshrined in the Paris Agreement.
This is an average for these two weeks and it is not the first time the limit has been busted but the frequency and duration of the breakthroughs are becoming greater, leading to the inevitable conclusion that a full blown average temperature rise is coming.
The catastrophic effects this will trigger have been well-documented and the widespread consensus is that if emission cuts are not made sooner rather than later, the job will be that much more complex because of long-term CO2 buildup in the atmosphere.
So let’s maybe listen to the experts that have devoted their lives to understanding the issue that will affect every aspect of our existence in the decades to come. The EU set this new board up for a reason.
BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES includes weekly analysis not found anywhere else, as Sam Morgan helps you make sense of what is happening in Brussels. If you want to receive Brussels Behind the Scenes straight to your inbox every week, subscribe to the newsletter here.
