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EU environment ministers scrapped a commitment to lift its greenhouse gas emissions reduction target after several countries held back during many hours of negotiations over the proposals the bloc will present to the upcoming UN climate summit.
Poland, Hungary and Italy objected to a pledge to increase the bloc’s emissions reduction target from 55 per cent by 2030 to 57 per cent, compared with 1990 levels, according to diplomats involved in the discussions that concluded late on Monday in Luxembourg.
There were also fraught negotiations over references to phase out “unabated” fossil fuels, that would give an opening for countries to continue burning polluted fuels so long as the emissions are captured, but they were ultimately deleted from the text.
Ministers agreed to “a fully or predominantly decarbonised global power system in the 2030s”, adding that there should be “no room for new coal power”.
The EU’s position is crucial in setting the level of ambition at the UN COP28 discussions, to be held from the end of November in Dubai. The bloc is typically a leader in pushing for the strongest measures to cut emissions among the almost 200 countries involved.
But Teresa Ribera, the acting Spanish minister for ecological transition, who chaired the talks, said the member states “did not want to create any confusion” and that 57 per cent was “not a new goal” for the bloc.
But, she added, wording in the document — which outlines the EU’s negotiating position for the UN COP28 conference — showed the EU was overachieving on the target it had already set.
Dan Jørgensen, the Danish minister for global climate policy, said it was “not a catastrophe” that the more ambitious target was dropped and the commitments on financing and renewable energy targets made it the “strongest mandate I’ve ever seen from the European Union ahead of COP”.
Jørgensen and South Africa’s environment minister Barbara Creecy are leading ministerial discussions over a so-called global stocktake that will appraise how far countries are from holding global warming to 1.5C as recommended by the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Global temperatures have already risen at least 1.1C since pre-industrial times.
The summit goals were also seen as an opportunity for more ambitious EU member states such as Denmark and the Netherlands to enshrine commitments to climate goals from other countries that view the shift to green energy as burdensome and expensive.
The gathering in Dubai takes place after unprecedented weather extremes around the world, including the hottest summer on record that triggered drought and fires causing fatalities and destroying large areas of southern Europe.
“Despite the grim geopolitical outlook we cannot steer away from our climate goals,” said Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s new climate commissioner.
Despite the prospect that a change of government in Poland following Sunday’s elections could change the country’s position on climate matters, its negotiators maintained the line of the incumbent rightwing Law & Justice (PiS) party, which has regularly voted against the EU’s climate legislation in part due to Poland’s reliance on coal.
However, the main opposition party, Civic Platform, which along with coalition partners, won enough of the vote to form a government, according to exit polls on Monday, has pledged to accelerate the country’s shift away from coal.
Speaking ahead of Monday’s meeting, Swedish environment minister Romina Pourmokhtari said it would be a “strong message” for Poland “to have a government that has a more pragmatic view on how to handle climate matters”.
Italy initially refused to approve the EU position texts unless synthetic biofuels, made from material such as organic waste, were allowed to be counted towards carbon emissions targets in a separate piece of legislation for heavy-duty vehicles also being negotiated on Monday.
Rome’s stance on the heavy-duty vehicles law echoes that of Germany, which this year pulled its support for the EU’s 2035 ban on combustion engines as it sought greater recognition for so-called e-fuels.
Italy in 2014 became the first EU member state to mandate the use of biofuels to replace petrol and diesel, prompting significant growth in its domestic biofuel industry.
The disagreements underline the difficulty of striking more ambitious climate legislation among the 27 bloc countries at a time of high inflation and fears that the EU is losing its industrial competitiveness.
Negotiations were also held up by concerns from several member states including France that targets for cutting emissions from city buses were too tough.
Jørgensen said that, while he was “optimistic” for COP28, he had to be “realistic” about what could be achieved on several contentious issues such as funding for developing countries exposed to the worst effects of climate change and securing commitments from other nations to phase out fossil fuels. “There is quite some way to go.”
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