EU Unveils Proposal to Bring It’s Emissions to Zero by 2050

The European Union today unveiled a strategy to get its contribution to global climate change down to zero in just 30 years. The EU would be the first major economy to reach such a milestone.

However, the proposal faces several hurdles as it makes its way toward a vote by the EU’s parliament and national governments, and critics have accused the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch which devised the proposal, of pulling its punches to placate lower-ambition European countries. The strategy, which was put forward one week before the United Nations begins this year’s global climate summit in Poland, outlines eight possible scenarios for the EU to move toward its pledges under the Paris climate agreement.

The rules for the agreement are going to be devised at next week’s summit.The proposal does not outline any scenario in which the EU stops producing greenhouse gas emissions entirely. Instead, it’s most ambitious scenario lowers emissions to “net-zero”. However the strategy has come into criticism for presenting the “net-zero emissions by 2050” option as the most ambitious scenario. Other possibilities include an 85% decrease in emissions, or a net-zero goal to be reached in later decades. 

Forbes