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    Council Adopts 2050 Climate-Neutral Target Position

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    Stockholm (NordSIP) – On June 29th, the Council of the European Union adopted the European climate law, including the goal of a climate-neutral EU by 2050. The law also sets an aspirational goal for the Union to strive to achieve negative emissions after 2050. Having been adopted by both the European Parliament and the Council, the European climate law will be signed and published in the Official Journal, before entering into force.

    In the context of the EU legislative process, this decision ends adoption procedure and sets into legislation the new target and follows a political agreement reached with the European Parliament on 21 April and the Parliament’s adoption of its position at first reading on 24 June.

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    ”I warmly welcome this final step of the adoption of the EU’s very first climate law which enshrines into legislation the 2050 climate neutrality objective. An agreement on the European climate law has been a priority for the Portuguese Presidency and I am glad that we have successfully brought it over the finishing line,” says João Pedro Matos Fernandes, Minister of Environment and Climate Action.

    Moreover, the European climate law sets a binding  target of a reduction of net greenhouse gas emissions (emissions after deduction of removals) by at least 55% by 2030 compared to 1990. To ensure that sufficient efforts to reduce and prevent emissions are deployed until 2030, the climate law limits the contribution of removals to that target to 225 Mt of CO2 equivalent. The law foresees that the EU will also aim to achieve a higher volume of carbon net sink by 2030.

    The Commission will also propose an intermediate climate target for 2040, if appropriate, at the latest within six months after the first global stocktake carried out under the Paris Agreement. At the same time, it will publish a projected indicative Union’s greenhouse gas budget for the period 2030-2050, together with its underlying methodology. The budget is defined as the indicative total volume of net greenhouse gas emissions (expressed as CO2 equivalent and providing separate information on emissions and removals) that are expected to be emitted in that period without putting at risk the Union’s commitments under the Paris Agreement.

    The European climate law establishes a European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change to provide independent scientific advice and produce reports on EU measures, climate targets and indicative greenhouse gas budgets and their coherence with the European climate law and the EU’s international commitments under the Paris Agreement.

    Image courtesy of the Council of the EU

    Filipe Albuquerque
    Filipe Albuquerque
    Filipe is an economist with 8 years of experience in macroeconomic and financial analysis for the Economist Intelligence Unit, the UN World Institute for Development Economic Research, the Stockholm School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies. Filipe holds a MSc in European Political Economy from the LSE and a MSc in Economics from the University of London, where he currently is a PhD candidate.

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