Analysis: New EU emissions plan is even less ambitious than ‘woeful’ UK climate efforts

Europe is still thinking small on the biggest issue facing the planet, writes Harry Cockburn

Can European climate goals be matched with the action to meet them? (Getty)

After months of internal wrangling, the European Union has set out new legally binding emissions targets.

The new legislation has signed into law a target to reduce net EU emissions by 55 per cent by 2030, from 1990 levels, and hit net zero by 2050.

It comes two months after the UK set out its own interim legally binding emissions target - to slash emissions by 78 per cent of 1990 levels by 2035. Back in 2019, the UK became the first major economy to set a legally binding net zero emissions goal for 2050.

But despite the ever more ambitious rhetoric on climate policy, the action to match them has not emerged.

Last week British government’s advisers, the Climate Change Committee, said the country had made “woeful” progress on tackling the climate crisis, and singled out key areas for improvement including emissions from farming and in preparing for extreme weather impacts.

This is despite the government routinely touting the country as having the world’s most ambitious climate change target.

Some progress has been made. The UK’s total emissions fell to almost half their 1990 level last year, prompting suggestions the country was already halfway to meeting its 2050 target.

However, this was largely due to the impacts of the lockdowns to curb the coronavirus pandemic, and emissions are forecast to rise sharply.

The CCC chair, Conservative politician Lord Deben, warned that though the UK’s 78 per cent reduction target by 2035 was admirable, the action being taken to reach it was “just not there”.

The EU’s new legislation will allow the bloc to release almost a quarter (23 per cent) more emissions than the UK says it will cut just five years later, in comparison to 1990 levels.

Greenpeace EU climate and energy campaigner Silvia Pastorelli told The Independent: “Despite a bamboozling array of new policies, the fact remains that the EU’s climate ambition falls far short.

“The EU, and the UK for that matter, should be hitting zero emissions by 2040 if they’re to do their share to keep global heating under 1.5C. In the EU, the trajectory to get there requires at least 65 per cent cuts by 2030. The EU’s 55 per cent target for 2030 is not consistent with what scientists are telling us is needed to prevent climate breakdown.”

The new legislation comes immediately after the EU’s financial watchdog warned that greenhouse gas emissions from EU farms have not declined since 2010.

Livestock rearing accounts for around half of the sector’s carbon footprint, while emissions from chemical fertilizers and manure increased between 2010 and 2018.

It comes after Greta Thunberg was among those who attacked the EU for lack of ambition over its new common agricultural policy (CAP), which provides subsidies for farmers and which the EU spends about a third of its budget on.

Despite some environmentally-friendly components it has been claimed around three quarters of the funds will still go to intensive farms - which place the greatest burden on the natural world.

Thunberg called on the European Parliament to vote down the legislation, saying: “Otherwise we will lose another seven years. If this doesn’t change, reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement will be impossible. As the politicians responsible are well aware of.”