The draft report by MEP Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy (ALDE, Netherlands), published on Monday 9 January, on the proposal for a regulation on effort-sharing among the member states on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in non-ETS sectors (transport, buildings, agriculture and waste) seeks to restrict the flexibility offered to countries in achieving their national targets.
This is no mean challenge since this key proposal of the “summer package” presented by the Commission in July is to allow the EU to achieve its climate target in these sectors (a 30% emissions reduction by 2030 compared with 2005 levels) in order to implement the Paris climate agreement (see EUROPE 11598).
To this end, the rapporteur proposes to reduce from 280 million tonnes of CO2 to 190 million tonnes the flexibility that would allow the LULUCF sector to be used as an offset to achieve national targets over the whole 2021-2030 period.
This is one of the improvements that environmentalist NGOs, which have been complaining about possible loopholes, have welcomed, stating that the text is moving in the right direction. They are pleased, too, with other changes to Article 7 of the draft regulation which establishes the link with the draft LULUCF (Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry) regulation.
The draft report proposes that, by 2019, the Commission should present a report summarising how member states will ensure land or forest removals of carbon dioxide are permanent.
It strengthens the requirement that countries can only use the LULUCF credits “if they are needed” by requiring that member states prove the LULUCF credits are needed in each five-year period. This means their starting point must be to look at what emissions reductions they can make without the use of these controversial credits.
In addition, the rapporteur clarifies that, if forest management credits are included in the effort-sharing regulation, the overall flexibility that countries are allowed will not increase beyond 190 million tonnes of CO2.
Fern urges Parliament environment committee to back its rapporteur. “We congratulate Mr Gerbrandy for taking the first step to right the climate wrongs of the Commission’s Effort Sharing Regulation. The LULUCF loophole in Article seven was the weakest link in the Commission’s ESR proposal, but Mr Gerbrandy has made crucial improvements which reduces this harm, without removing it altogether. The Environment Committee can and must go further”, stated Hannah Mowat, the forest and climate campaigner with Fern, an NGO “making the EU work for people and forests”. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)