EU set to recommend 90% CO2 cut for 2040 climate target

The European Commission is poised to recommend on Tuesday the EU reduces its net greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040, a target that will test political appetite to continue Europe's ambitious fight against climate crisis ahead of EU elections.

Drafts of the Commission recommendation show the EU will endorse the 90% target for net greenhouse gas cuts compared with 1990 levels.

The 2040 goal aims to keep European Union countries on track between the EU's existing 2030 climate goal and its long-term aim to have net zero emissions by 2050 and end Europe's ongoing contribution to climate crisis.

Drawn up amid farmers' protests across Europe and political pushback on some EU green laws, the EU plan is set to focus on preserving public support and European industries.

"To continue the European Green Deal into the decade up to 2040, extra focus will be needed on the enabling conditions for businesses and citizens to master the transition," said a draft of the EU plan, which could change before it is published.

"Climate action has to take everybody along," it said.

Tuesday's proposal will kick off the political debate on the target, but it will be up to a new EU Commission, formed after EU elections in June, to make a final legal proposal.

Europe's climate agenda is entering a difficult political phase, as it begins to touch sensitive sectors, such farming, and traditional industries face fierce green tech competition from China.

The draft said agriculture would need to cut non-CO2 emissions 30% by 2040 from 2015 levels, but EU officials on Monday indicated this target for the politically tense sector may be scrapped in the final document.

Protests by farmers across Europe against rising issues in the agricultural sector have grown bigger, spreading from the Netherlands and Belgium to other European countries.

Farmers, mainly in Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Italy and Hungary are rallying against the EU's agricultural policies by blocking roads with tractors. They say the policies and regulations to combat climate crisis are costly for them.

The most powerful and widespread of these protests first took place in the Netherlands back in 2019, where farmers blocked traffic in several areas with more than 2,000 tractors on the roads.

The protests were a result of an independent committee report submitted to the government that called for drastic measures in the agricultural sector to reduce nitrogen emissions, which cause land, sea and air pollution.

Farmers in Belgium followed suit by stopping the traffic flow with their tractors on the freeway in Brussels in 2023, due to the increase in costs of environmental regulations.

The protests have grown in intensity since then, with recently farmers in other European capitals and cities also beginning to make themselves heard.

Farmers are blocking main roads with tractors in Berlin, Paris and Rome, as well as other cities, to draw public attention to the EU policies and their declining incomes as a result of them.

They argue that the EU is making agricultural production more difficult by imposing strict rules on the use of carbon fertilisers and pesticides under the European Green Deal.

The EU's recommended 2040 target would transform Europe's energy mix, with coal-fuelled power phased out and overall fossil fuel use reduced by 80%, replaced with renewable and nuclear power.

A 90% emissions cut is just inside the 90-95% range recommended by the EU's official climate science advisors.

The draft also laid out the cost of failing to tackle climate crisis, in the form of more destructive extreme weather — which, it said, could unleash additional costs of 2.4 trillion euros by 2050 if global warming was not limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The EU had reduced its greenhouse gas emissions 33% in 2022, from 1990 levels.