The European Union’s executive arm has proposed a goal to cut the EU’s net emissions by 90% on 1990 levels by 2040 – with up to 3% of those reductions coming from paying other countries outside the bloc to cut their greenhouse gas pollution.

The European Commission has faced pressure from EU member states like Italy to weaken the goal and from France to introduce “flexibility”. Member states and the European Parliament will need to sign off on the proposal for it to become the EU’s official goal.

But, during a press conference in heatwave-hit Brussels today, European climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra denied that “flexibilites” like carbon offsets were a concession to these countries on what he called a “sensitive topic”.

“We truly, genuinely are convinced that they are an improvement to the system,” he told journalists, adding that the 90% goal was “ambitious” and options like carbon credits are “pragmatic” and “non-dogmatic”.

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Justifying buying offsets from abroad, he said that the “planet doesn’t discriminate where emissions are being put into the air” and that the offsets the EU buys would be “high quality”.

With many developing countries keen to sell offsets under the United Nations’ new Article 6 mechanism, Hoekstra said buying them would “help in building bridges with our friends all across the globe” and “give breathing space” for European industries which find it hard to cut their emissions.

Other governments like the UK, Norway and Canada have also left open the possibility of using carbon offsets to meet their emissions reduction targets.

Japan has gone further, saying it aims to buy offsets for 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030 and 200 million by 2040. Japan has a target to reduce emissions 46% by 2030 and 73% by 2040 below 2013 levels. In 2013, Japan’s emissions were 1,408 million tonnes.

In January 2024, Switzerland received the first ever batch of carbon credits produced through an Article 6 project – with Switzerland paying for electric buses in Thailand’s capital Bangkok. Swiss charities said the offsets were flawed as the switch to electric buses would have happened anyway without Swiss money.

Carbon offsetting loopholes

Some European climate campaigners criticised the European Commission’s offsets proposal. Many carbon credits have been exposed as failing to deliver the emissions reductions they claim.

Carbon Market Watch policy director Sam Van den plas said the “carbon offsetting loopholes” in the EU’s plan are “nothing more than distractions and delays from the climate action Europe needs”.

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Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare said that the 90% target for 2040 was aligned with the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. But, he said, the potential use of carbon credits is “outsourcing Europe’s responsibility” for meeting that.

Several campaigners pointed to a 2023 recommendation from the EU’s Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change that the bloc of 27 nations should adopt a 90-95% target.

The advisory body said that even this would be less than the EU’s fair share of global emissions reductions – and, to address the shortfall, the EU should aim to be carbon-negative after 2050 and support governments outside the EU to reduce their emissions. It did not comment on what form that support could take.

Political trouble ahead

The European Commission will now have to get EU member states and the European Parliament to agree to its proposal. Environment ministers from the EU’s member states will meet in Denmark next Thursday and Friday, where they will discuss the 2040 target.

Time is tight as the Commission and Council want to submit a 2035 emissions target as part of the EU’s updated climate plan to the United Nations by the end of September – the deadline for inclusion in a UN report synthesising the emissions reductions offered by different countries in their NDC climate plans.

The EU plans to base its 2035 target on a point between the already agreed 2030 goal of a reduction of at least 55% and the new 2040 target. The EU aims to reach net zero – where it emits no more greenhouse gases than it removes from the atmosphere – by 2050.

One EU climate negotiator told Climate Home they were “concerned” for the Danish government, which is now presiding over the Council that represents the EU’s national governments.

E3G Brussels head Manon Dufour said: “Denmark’s been handed an unnecessarily tough job – that of getting all European governments to work and agree something during the summer months – but the preparations will pay off. They have to.”

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EU Commission proposes allowing carbon offsets to help meet 2040 climate goal