Brussels proposes to the Twenty-seven that they reduce emissions by 90% in 2040 amid suspicion towards the green transition

The European Commission is preparing to set new climate goals for 2040 in the hope of continuing to maintain international leadership in the fight against the climate crisis, a battle that represents an opportunity for the EU to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels that it has to import mostly.

Brussels wants to set the path of “the transition to abandon” oil, gas and coal and to do so it establishes as a major objective that the greenhouse gas emissions of the Twenty-Seven as a whole are reduced by “at least” 90% compared to 1990 levels, according to the drafts of the plan consulted by EL PAÍS and that the Community Executive wants to approve this Tuesday.

The Brussels proposal, however, comes at a time when reluctance towards environmental policies is growing, populism is using the green transition as an argument to criticize the EU and conservative parties - such as the European People's Party (EPP) - , who fear losing space to the extreme right, demand a pause in ecological policies that, they maintain, are moving too quickly.

All in a context of protests by farmers in several EU countries that have charged, among other things, against future and current environmental regulations that they must comply with.

The recommendation of the community Executive led by Ursula von der Leyen, to which this newspaper has had access, may still undergo changes in the closed-door debate on Tuesday in the College of Commissioners and lose, for example, that “at least” one 90% reduction of greenhouse gases as a goal for 2040 (taking 1990 levels as a reference) and staying with the round figure of 90%, community sources point out.

This reduction goal is considered the “most effective” to achieve the goal of climate neutrality in 2050.

Brussels, in its communication, has analyzed three emissions reduction scenarios and highlights that 90% in 2040 is the most appropriate.

“It is the target option expected to have the greatest impact on reducing global emissions and increasing the prospects of keeping 1.5 degrees Celsius warming within reach, in order to limit disruptions to all economies, including the risk of reaching irreversible climate tipping points,” says one of the texts, prepared by the teams of Maros Sefcovic, commissioner for the Green Deal, and Wopke Hoekstra, head of the Climate area.

The goal is accompanied by faster deployment of low-carbon technologies, such as hydrogen production by electrolysis.

And also other more controversial and uncertain proposals, such as carbon capture, industrial carbon removal between 2031 and 2040 and the door left open for the implementation of mini nuclear reactors in just over five years.

If the 90% target is met, says the Brussels proposal, annual premature deaths due to air pollution would rise from 466,000 in 2015 to 196,000 per year in 2040 and related health costs would be reduced by one trillion euros per year. .

On the contrary, inaction would lead to much greater and increasing costs in the coming decades, not only in terms of lost production, but also in terms of lives lost and worsening living conditions, they emphasize.

The proposal also highlights the benefits of continuing to advance in the transformation of the European economy.

For example, it is estimated that the cost of importing fossil fuels would go from representing 2.3% of EU GDP now to 1.4% in 2040.

The EU has already set its 2030 goal of reducing emissions by at least 55% (and climate neutrality by 2050).

The new proposal that the Commission will launch on Tuesday is a recommendation to the Twenty-seven and also the “most realistic scenario” to achieve the Paris climate agreement goal of limiting temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

It will be the next Community Executive that, after the European elections in June, will present a draft regulation that will have to negotiate with the governments of the Twenty-seven and the Parliament.

But the community club faces a decisive moment in which it will have to determine whether to continue on the path to decarbonization regardless of the short-term political and economic costs.

In fact, in recent months, the Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen has reduced its ambition amid demands to go towards that path from its own party (EPP), which even tried to overturn the nature restoration law.

For conservatives and populists, green policies have become a scapegoat and an easy place for criticism.

They are also the same for Eurosceptics, who use regulations as food to attract votes.

Voices are growing against the list of climate and industrial regulations set by Brussels and towards the ambitious climate approach of the community club.

In the heat of all this, for example, the Peasant-Citizen Movement emerged in the Netherlands in 2019.

There are several Member States that, given their national panorama, have called on the EU not to accelerate.

In any case, if the short-term vision is not addressed and wins, the cost can be enormous.

And the EU may also lose more ground to the United States and China.

Uncertain technologies

On the side that calls for more ambition – for example, some EU states and environmental groups – are also concerned about the drafts of the EU plan that have become known.

The 90% proposal refers to net emissions.

In other words, the door is opened to offsetting the gases that are emitted through, for example, sinks (such as forests).

The text advocates for an “earlier” deployment of carbon capture, techniques whose current development can be described as anecdotal.

Sources from one of the Member States to which the Commission has been advancing some keys of its plan express their fears about the excessive focus that Brussels places on these uncertain carbon dioxide capture techniques.

The fossil fuel industry and the countries most dependent on oil and coal have been insisting for years on the capture and storage of CO₂ as a solution to climate change because it allows them to continue using the products they sell.

Greenpeace, after analyzing several of the drafts, assures that the Commission's proposal "hides" a "very dubious accounting, based on magic wands to make pollution disappear."

According to the calculations of this NGO, the Brussels plan “implies that the cut in real (gross) emissions” is 82%, because to “achieve the net reduction objective of 90%” is achieved with “the capture and carbon storage.

This storage is especially planned in the EU plan for the industrial sector.

According to the text of the proposal consulted by EL PAÍS, in the case of the electricity sector “it should approach total decarbonization in the second half of the 2030s.”

Although Brussels assures that “renewable energies such as solar and wind will constitute the vast majority of solutions”, it does not close the doors to other zero and low emissions technological solutions, among which efficiency, storage and energy are mentioned. nuclear.

Regarding this latest technology, the draft plan recalls the “industrial alliance” that the Commission has already announced to “accelerate the deployment of small modular reactors”, systems that are still incipient, but which Brussels maintains could begin to be implemented at the beginning of 2030. be implemented in some EU countries.

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