Climate: 2030 target not hit but sights already set on 2040

The summer weather of 2023 may have been variable in Belgium, but elsewhere in Europe and beyond the summer heat was breaking records once again. The World Weather Attribution research group recently announced that the heat waves that hit North America and Europe in July "would have been virtually impossible without climate change." The clock is therefore ticking for policy measures to combat global warming.

Since last summer, a few important steps have been taken on climate legislation in the EU, with several laws being passed to help achieve the ambitious and binding Fit-for-55 target. The most prominent examples are the carbon border tax (CBAM), mandatory installation of charging points for cars and trucks, the greening of fuels in the aviation and shipping sectors, an accelerated scaling back of EU ETS emission allowances and a ban on the sale of new cars with combustion engines by 2035.

These new laws come not a moment too soon as time is running out to meet the 2030 targets. What's more, the transition will only prove more costly the longer action is delayed, so it's certainly worth taking these necessary measures sooner rather than later.

The new laws are an important step towards meeting the 2030 climate targets, but more still needs to be done. Additional initiatives will be required if the EU wants to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by 55% (compared to 1990 levels) by 2030. The difficulty of establishing such initiatives was recently demonstrated when Belgium's regional governments were negotiating the Belgian climate and energy plan: disagreement over the feasibility of the EU's climate target for Belgium (a 47% reduction in emissions in the ESD sectors) and the regional distribution of the efforts required led Belgium to miss the deadline for submitting its preliminary plan.

Although we are not yet on track to meet the current 2030 climate targets, we are already looking ahead to the next decade. The EU is currently working on its 2040 climate target and held a public consultation on it between April and June 2023. The input from this survey will be analysed in the coming months.

For the time being, a great deal is happening behind the scenes and we will have to wait until the first quarter of 2024 before we hear about the proposed targets for 2040. However, there are already tentative signs that the target will again be ambitious and even come close to the 2050 net-zero target. The EU clearly wants to continue its pioneering role in the climate transition. Unfortunately, its efforts will only serve to keep down the financial cost of the transition, as the physical cost of climate change depends not only on the EU's efforts, but also on the rest of the world. After all, the bloc is responsible for 'just' 7% (see figure 1) of global fossil carbon dioxide emissions (or 9% if we include emissions from imports).