European Union states have agreed to bind themselves to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, after a day of fraught negotiations that ran into the early hours of the morning.
Environment ministers from the EU states settled on a commitment to cut the union’s carbon emissions by 90 per cent of 1990 levels, over the next 15 years.
The agreement sets an interim milestone between existing – ambitious – targets to cut emissions by more than 50 per cent by the end of this decade, and to totally decarbonise and become climate “neutral” by 2050.
The deal worked out between national capitals to curb greenhouse emissions by 90 per cent by 2040 included several concessions and extra flexibility about how that target could be met.
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Talks began in Brussels on Tuesday and ran late into the night, breaking up after 4am, before resuming on Wednesday morning for a vote that approved the new climate commitments.
The deal will see EU states afforded more flexibility to buy carbon “credits”, which would allow capitals to effectively finance climate works in the Global South or elsewhere, that could be counted towards their own reduction.
Ministers agreed to allow credits account for 5 per cent of national reductions, up from 3 per cent. How this system of credits will work will be teased out in the coming years.
The compromise agreement also included guarantees that further flexibility to offset emission reductions via this carbon credit system would be considered.
“The planet doesn’t care where we reduce emissions”, EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said on Wednesday, after the 2040 deal was agreed.
“We just need to reduce them. What we need to do, as humanity combined, is find the best possible way at the lowest cost,” he said.
The deal on the EU’s long-term emission targets comes as world leaders are gathering in Belém, Brazil, for the Cop30 climate summit, to the backdrop of warnings from the UN that the lack of progress cutting pollution would have serious consequences for the warming planet.
Europe’s desire to be a leader on climate change has come under pressure in the last year. Several governments are resisting reforms seen as necessary to move from a reliance on fossil fuels, such as a plan to ban new petrol and diesel engine cars.
About a dozen EU states are projected to fail to hit earlier targets to dramatically bring down their emissions by 2030.
Ireland is among those who look set to fall short of binding promises to reduce carbon emissions by 51 per cent by the end of this decade, something that has the potential to trigger EU fines of several billion euro.
The Irish Government received assurances that the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm that enforces the union’s laws, would work with those struggling to clear the 2030 hurdle.
During the talks the Irish delegation said EU states could not be “unfairly penalised” for missing the approaching targets, or have resources that could be invested into the green transition redirected to paying huge fines.
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic voted against setting a 2040 target. However, Italy and a small number of other states who had concerns changed positions to support the proposal, providing a big enough majority to approve the deal.
The 2040 climate target still has to be approved by MEPs in the European Parliament, before it becomes law.
