Emissions

At COP26 in Glasgow, past failures and shortcomings in climate finance mobilization and delivery must be ruthlessly addressed by presenting an implementation plan for future improvements.

The EU and Germany aim to be climate neutral by 2050 and 2045, respectively. The commitment to climate neutrality means that zero-emission alternatives will replace emissions-intensive processes and products. One energy alternative is climate-friendly hydrogen. However, hydrogen is not an all-purpose miracle that solves everything at once.

Reducing methane emissions from oil and gas production to consumption is key in preventing radiative forcing. Shutting down the most immediate unabated emissions of the greenhouse gas methane can be done at no net cost and it has enormous potential in terms of climate policy. Climate tipping points in relation to global warming must be avoided. Yet, the oil and gas industry does not exhaust all options to reduce methane leakages, partly due to a lack of regulation. The EU is planning to deliver binding legislation to this end, covering also gas imports. This event presented concrete policy proposals for a methane charge and a performance standard.

The European Commission's Fit-for-55 package proposal to go to 100% zero emission car sales from 2035 shows a serious commitment for reaching carbon neutrality by 2050, and will put European industry in the driving seat to dominate the new global electric vehicle (EV) market. While this move could democratise the purchase of EVs, policy-makers need to take a small extra step to ensure early build up of EVs to drive cost reductions and fully guarantee that chargers are available in the right locations.

While the EU's Fit-for-55 Package includes many important files, the European Commission postponed legislation on methane a particularly potent greenhouse gas to December 2021. This article summarises the issues at stake and argues that without stringent regulation on this gas, the Fit-for-55 Package will fail to reach climate goals.

The proposal for a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is likely the most contentious element of the Fit for 55 package, with significant ramifications not only internally in the EU but beyond its borders. It is a long-discussed idea whose time has finally come as part of European Commission President von der Leyen’s European Green Deal grand bargain.

Tax systems across the EU are currently neither fair nor green. The burden of taxation has been steadily shifting in recent decades from corporate profits and personal wealth to labour income, especially of lower-income earners, helping to drive growing inequality across the EU. And with men disproportionately represented among the EU’s wealthiest citizens, the system helps underpin gender inequality too.

Methane emissions from the oil and gas sector are a major contributing factor to climate change as the key component of fossil gas has a global warming potential 86 times higher than CO2. Regulating methane emissions in the oil and gas upstream supply chain as well as coal sector is therefore a powerful tool and urgent for mitigating GHG emissions and meeting climate targets. It is important that upcoming EU legislation be binding and apply to the entire supply chain of the oil, gas and coal industries, including domestic sources and gas imports from third countries. Only if all measures apply to EU imports, wholesale and retail, the impact of methane emissions on the global climate can truly be addressed.

Putting a price on CO2 emissions is necessary for climate protection, and applying the polluter-pays principle is an important step toward climate justice. As long as follow-up costs are not taken into account, climate protection will not have sufficient weight in investment decisions.

Climate campaigner Andy Gheorghiu takes stock of a 2020 full of climate activism in Europe and the World, and pencils the main climate policy milestones to look forward to in 2021.