The European Union has started the process of establishing the bloc’s post-2030 climate policy framework. After launching a public consultation in June 2023, the European Commission published a communication on the 2040 target, accompanied by an impact assessment, in February 2024. The communication is the first step towards a legislative proposal in 2025 that will amend the European Climate Law, and to subsequent proposals that will operationalise the 2040 target within key EU climate policies (including the Emission Trading System, Effort Sharing and LULUCF regulations) in 2026.
If amendments to the EU Climate Law are to achieve climate neutrality and net negativity thereafter, then the roles and characteristics of emissions reduction, biogenic sequestration and permanent removals must be clarified. As stated by the IPCC, rapid, deep and sustained emission reductions are needed for the planet to stay within the 1.5° or 2° temperature thresholds adopted by signatories of the Paris Agreement, including the European Union. As a concurrent measure, scientific analysis indicates that the deployment of carbon dioxide removals will be unavoidable in the pursuit of net negative CO2 emissions.
In the near term, carbon removals can complement emissions reduction by lowering net emissions and counterbalancing residual emissions. However, the current approach to carbon removal methods inappropriately overlooks their differing characteristics and potentials. Further differentiation has to be made between biogenic sequestration and storage in natural sinks, which is vulnerable to natural and human disturbances and thus only has a temporary effect, and permanent removals, which in contrast can store carbon for at least several centuries.
The European Climate Law, as currently written, requires greenhouse gas emissions to be balanced with carbon dioxide removals by 2050. It explicitly mandates the EU
institutions and the member states to “prioritise swift and predictable emissions reductions and, at the same time, enhance removals by natural sinks”. However, not only does the Climate Law not mention the different roles of biogenic sequestration by natural sinks and permanent removals, but it also fails to determine how much or which type of removals should be used to reach the net-zero target by 2050, or how much residual emissions will be allowed at that point.
In addition, with the exception of the LULUCF Regulation, which has set net targets for carbon sequestration in the land sector until 2030, there is currently no policy in
place that has interpreted the potential benefits and trade-offs for carbon removal or sequestration. Introducing this approach across the EU’s climate legislation framework is essential to ensuring the bloc keeps on track to realise ambitious targets that drastically reduce emissions, while providing the regulatory space for the sustainable deployment of permanent removals and the protection of natural ecosystems.
The EU must take advantage of this opportunity to revise the European Climate Law to ensure that carbon removals are supplementary to emissions reductions and to clarify the different roles of permanent removals and biogenic sequestration. Accordingly, stakeholders representing academia, civil society and industry established the CO2ol Down project to co-create a proposal for a revision of the European Climate Law that would fulfil these aims.
