EU Launches Strategic Climate Plan To Secure Net Zero Emissions By 2050

European Union (EU) policymakers on Wednesday unveiled their most ambitious plan yet to tackle climate change, aiming to turn green goals into concrete action this decade and set an example for the world's other big economies to follow, Kate Abnett reported for Reuters.

The European Commission, the EU executive body, set out in painstaking detail how the bloc's 27 countries can meet their collective goal to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by 55% from 1990 levels by 2030 - a step towards "net zero" emissions by 2050.

This will mean raising the cost of emitting carbon for heating, transport and manufacturing, taxing high-carbon aviation fuel and shipping fuel that has not been taxed before, and charging importers at the border for the carbon emitted in making products such as cement, steel and aluminum abroad. It will consign the internal combustion engine to history.

"Yes, it is hard," EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans told a news conference.

"But it's also an obligation, because if we renounce our obligation to help humanity, live within planetary boundaries, we would fail, not just ourselves, but we would fail our children and our grandchildren."

The price of failure, he said, was that they would be "fighting wars over water and food."

The "Fit for 55" measures will require approval by member states and the European parliament, a process that could take two years. As policymakers seek to balance industrial reforms with the need to protect the economy and promote social justice, they will face intense lobbying from businesses, from poorer member states that want to ward off rises in the cost of living, and from the more polluting countries that face a costly transition.

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