The European Comission proposed this Tuesday a 90% net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 2040 in relation to 1990, a fundamental stage to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality in 2050.
The ortarget for 2040 will set the pace of the effort to which the Twenty-seven will have to adapt in the next decade, which between 1990 and 2022 they already reduced their emissions by 32.5%in addition to offering a perspective on long-term investments in the face of the technological race with the United States and China. The figure will materialize then through standards that will affect activities such as transportation, energy or agriculture.
90% reduction in gas emissions
“Based on the best available science and an impact study, we recommend that the goal for 2040 be a 90% cut in emissions,” said European Commissioner for Climate Action Wopke Hoekstra.
In a speech before the plenary session of European Parliament in Strasbourg, in the northeast of France, Hoekstra said that “climate action requires planning (…) It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and we have to make sure everyone crosses the finish line.”
The path that the countries of the European Union have to follow
Achieving this goal by 2040 means that the 27 countries of the European Union must maintain the same rate of cuts planned for the period of 2020 to 2030.
For it, The proposal contemplates the capture and storage of ambitious volumes of carbon dioxide. Electricity production should be virtually carbon-free in the second half of the 2030s, while consumption of fossil fuels used for energy purposes would fall by 80% by 2040.
The Green Deal of the European Union
However, the so-called “Green Deal” of the EU, to achieve carbon neutrality, raised fears about the impact of a fast-paced transition.
The set of measures planned by the European Commission -the executive arm of the EU- to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 made progress in the areas of transport and industry. However, is experiencing obvious problems in the agricultural sector, responsible for 11% of greenhouse gas emissions in the block.
The necessary investments that the European Union will have to make
The Commission estimates that the investments needed between 2031 and 2050 to achieve carbon neutrality could reach the 660,000 million euros (about $644 billion) in the energy sector alone.
To this we would have to add investments of the order of 870,000 million euros (about 930,000 million dollars) in the transport sector. According to the Commission, this gigantic cost could be covered by associating public investments and private resources.
Elections in the European Parliament
Furthermore, in June some will be held elections in the community bloc that will renew the European Parliament and that they will then mark a renewal in the European Commission. According to the polls, the right and the extreme right will emerge stronger in these elections.
A group of 11 countriesincluding Spain, France and Germany, signed an open letter to the Commission to ask that the transition to the 2040 goal be “fair” and leave “no one behind, especially the most vulnerable citizens.”
In this scenario, everything indicates that the next European Commissionfruit of the June elections, will have to turn this proposal into draft legislation. However, some of the voices most reluctant to tighten environmental legislation come from the European People’s Party (EPP, right), the majority in Parliament, to which the current head of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, belongs.
Source: Ambito
