Current 23% emissions cut cannot be an excuse to emit more after 2020

The European Environment Agency (EEA) “Trends and projections in Europe 2015” report, published today, reveals that the EU is overachieving its emission reduction target for 2020 already, by 3% in 2014.

Reacting to the report, Wendel Trio, Director of Climate Action Network Europe said: “We welcome the fact that the EU is overachieving its emission reduction target for 2020 already now. We encourage the EU to keep this pace of reducing emissions in the run up to 2020, as climate science clearly shows that global emissions need to be drastically cut in the next 5 to 10 years.

If the EU wants to be a true leader in the Paris climate negotiations, it cannot use these additional reductions before 2020 as an excuse to lower its efforts after 2020. There is a real risk that the current additional reductions will be transferred from before to after 2020 and thus will end up being additional emission permits for the period 2021 to 2030. This would result in increasing the amount of emissions under the EU’s pledge for the Paris climate agreement.

CAN Europe believes that a true European leadership in the run up to the Paris climate summit requires the EU to cancel all unused emissions permits in 2020 under the proposed reform of the Emissions Trading Scheme. This way the EU will both contribute to closing the pre-2020 and post-2020 gaps between pledged emission reduction and what is needed to keep the warming well below 2 degrees”.

The annual EEA ‘Trends and projections’ report published today provides an updated assessment of progress made by the European Union (EU) and European countries towards their climate mitigation and energy targets.