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Ursula von der Leyen was not stingy with pathos in the EU Parliament in Brussels. “We have to lead ourselves into the world of tomorrow,” said the EU Commission President in her first State of the Union address. Nowhere is it more necessary to act faster than before. Even when the crisis in the crown paralyzed much of the world, the earth continued to “get dangerously hot.” Evacuations due to impending glacier break in Montblanc, forest fires in the US, severe damage to crops due to record drought in Romania showed: EU must get serious
Climate protection should be the highlight of von der Leyen’s tenure, then came the coronavirus. Now the climate president is back and wants to impose a significantly stricter climate target on the EU.
By 2030, greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by at least 55 percent compared to 1990, up from 40 percent previously. To put it cautiously, it would be ambitious: In the last 30 years, a reduction of only 25 percent has been achieved, leaving only ten years for the remaining 30 percent.
He knows “it will be too much for some and too little for others,” von der Leyen said. But it must be done if the EU is to reach its goal of being the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050. If you look more closely, however, it turns out that the tightening of the climate goal will likely be less than promised, because the Commission now the calculation method is changing.
The arithmetic trick saves several percentage points
For the new 2030 target to take off, the Commission must change its climate bill presented in March. In the still unpublished amendment text that SPIEGEL has received, there is an important innovation: land use, i.e. COtwo-Absorption of forests, soils or wetlands – should now be deducted from emissions. This is not mentioned in the March bill.
What looks like a technical detail has it all. Because forests alone, which cover around 40 percent of the EU’s surface, absorb more than 260 million tonnes of CO, according to figures from the EU’s statistical agency Eurostat.two by year. In a recently announced internal document, the EU Commission presented similar figures. After all, this amount represents about five percent of 1990 emissions. The tightening of the 2030 target by 15 percentage points, which von der Leyen announced with a grand gesture in his speech, would decrease by a full third.
“This is how you can also make a beautiful figure,” blasphemed green MEP Sven Giegold. He accuses the Commission of an “accounting trick”. Greenpeace’s criticism is even sharper: as fires raged in Siberia and California and forests dried up in Germany, “von der Leyen would like to offset the EU’s climate-related efforts with the forests most affected by the climate, “says Greenpeace expert Sebastian Mang.
The Vice-President of the EU Commission, Frans Timmermans, disagrees. The inclusion of land use only corresponds to the latest United Nations methods for calculating carbon sinks, the Dutchman told SPIEGEL. Additionally, shipping was not factored into the previous 40 percent reduction target, which must now be realized. “We don’t do accounting tricks,” Timmermans emphasizes.
Forests could do more to protect the climate
Christoph Thies, Greenpeace forest expert, finds it counterproductive to reduce COtwo-Include absorption through land use in the overall climate targets: “An incentive to protect forests would only exist if there was a separate target for COtwo– Absorption through land use. “If the EU wants to contribute to the Paris Climate Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era, it needs forests in their entirety, in addition to all other measures.
Furthermore, according to Thies, the renaturation of forests and the protection of soils would be a climate protection measure that “could have an immediate impact”. The current COtwo– Forest uptake, for example, could probably double. Around 80 percent of renewable wood is currently harvested across the EU. A reduction to 50 percent would go a long way.
However, in the opinion of experts, it is unlikely that the Paris target can be achieved. The world meteorological authority WMO fears that the 1.5 degree mark will be exceeded in the next five years. It is also questionable whether the Commission’s climate plan will be adopted in its current form.
The EU Parliament has yet to pass the law. However, there are already calls to cut emissions by 60 instead of 55 percent by 2030. It is even more uncertain whether EU states will accept this. The fact that the Commission has said little so far about how climate protection efforts should be distributed among member states is a “fundamental problem,” says Reimund Schwarze of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research. “We probably won’t see a viable outcome before 2025.”
Von der Leyen, on the other hand, is confident. After all, emissions have been cut by 25 percent since 1990, and the EU economy has grown by more than 60 percent in the same period. In addition, they now have better technology, more experience and the necessary investments. In any case, it is not just about reducing emissions, but about nothing less than a “systemic modernization of society and the economy.”
“We can do it,” von der Leyen shouted in his speech, which was delivered alternately in English, German and French. You could translate it as: “We can do it.”
