Prioritise Greenhouse Gas Neutrality: EU and German Climate Policy Should Be More Ambitious and More Pragmatic

Abstract:

Two years after the climate summit in Paris, the euphoria over the diplomatic break-through and adoption of new targets – holding the temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably even to 1.5 degrees – has largely evaporated. There has been little sign of additional ambition in climate change mitigation since.

One fundamental problem is the global nature of temperature targets, which are little suited for generating concrete national action plans and not at all suited for evaluating emissions reduction measures implemented by governments or businesses. Starting with the 'facilitative dialogue' being prepared at the Bonn climate summit for 2018, it is the third Paris mitigation target that should be the benchmark: namely to attain greenhouse-gas neutrality in the second half of the century.

The European Commission and member states of the European Union (EU) should make the zero emissions target their central reference point in reformulating the Climate Roadmap 2050 and in adopting a long-term decarbonisation strategy. This could provide the opportunity to redesign the EU’s climate policy so as to make it both more ambitious and more pragmatic.