The negotiating teams of the Council and the European Parliament have agreed on stricter targets for the sharing of efforts to reduce pollutant emissions by 2030 for sectors such as road transport or agriculture that are not covered by the European emissions trading system (ETS).
The effort sharing regulation (ESR) now envisages raising the common effort to reduce emissions from 30% to 40% compared to 1990 and includes paths of between 10% and 50% for each country, which in the case of Spain is set at 37%.
The sectors covered by this agreement represent 60% of total EU emissions and include areas such as road transport, agriculture, waste management and heating of buildings.
This new regulation is part of the climate package that the European Union wants to promote this legislature to reduce polluting emissions in the bloc by at least 55% by 2030 (compared to 1990) and is the second concrete measure of this battery of initiatives to go ahead, after banning the sale of combustion and hybrid cars from 2035.
To meet the more ambitious national targets, each Member State will have to ensure that it complies with a specific path with annual quotas to meet a target path until 2030, calculated on the basis of the average emissions during a specific period for the first tranche and on the basis of the figures for the previous years for the following periods.
The Minister of Environment of the Czech Republic and rotating presidency of the EU, Marian Jurecka, highlighted after the agreement that the pact arrives at the beginning of the United Nations Climate Summit (COP27) because it sends a clear signal to the world of the «serious» commitment of the European Union to the Paris Agreements.
The terms of the agreement, which still needs the formal approval of the full European Parliament and the EU-27 to become law, provide for a review in 2025 of the path designed for each Member State, with the aim of introducing upward or downward changes in the period 2026-2030 if there are unforeseen circumstances that require it.
In addition, countries will be able to accumulate or anticipate emissions quotas so that if in 2021 their emissions are less than those allocated per year, they will be able to accumulate up to 75% of the quota to compensate for subsequent years no later than 2030. For the years 2022 to 2029, they will be able to bank up to 25% of their annual emission allowances up to that year and use them in subsequent years up to 2030.
At the same time, in years in which emissions exceed the annual cap, member states may borrow the following year’s allocations up to 7.5% of their annual emissions allocations in respect of the years 2021 to 2025 and up to 5% in respect of 2026 to 2030.
The agreement also allows buying and selling emission allowances between member states, up to 10% of their annual emission allowances in respect of the years 2021 to 2025, and 15% in respect of the years 2026 to 2030.
Countries will be able to use a limited amount of credits generated from greenhouse gas removals in the land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector to meet their targets under the effort-sharing regulation. This flexibility will be divided into two periods, from 2021 to 2025 and from 2026 to 2030, with no possibility of extension between periods.
