‘Carbon gamble’? EU lawmakers back CO2 removal certification scheme

European Parliament lawmakers voted Tuesday (24 October) to uphold plans to certify carbon removals in the European Union, paving the way for new technologies to suck CO2 directly from the atmosphere.

While MEPs stressed that reducing greenhouse emissions must remain a top priority for the EU in the fight against climate change, they also threw their weight behind the carbon removal scheme, adopting the proposal by 59 votes in favour, 17 against and 9 abstentions.

“Climate change is already so serious that we cannot rely solely on emissions reductions but also need to remove carbon. This framework is the tool that makes this possible,” said Lídia Pereira, a Portuguese lawmaker from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) who is the Parliament’s speaker on the proposal.

The Parliament’s aim, Pereira said, was to ensure high-quality carbon removals and “regulate a market that has been plagued by greenwashing, lack of clarity and distrust”.

Planting trees, which suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, is today the most widespread carbon removal technique, and has been used by airlines to allow flyers to “offset” their emissions.

However, carbon offsets are controversial and have faced harsh criticism from forest campaigners who called the move a “carbon gamble”.

“While trees are essential to addressing the climate crisis, allowing polluters to pay to plant them to ‘offset’ continued emissions is a proven failed climate policy,” said Kelsey Perlman, a campaigner at Fern, a forest NGO.

“It has done nothing to restore forests and everything to enrich businesses and greenwash companies,” she said, calling on lawmakers to ban forest offsets.

Other techniques include Direct Air Capture (DAC) where giant fans suck CO2 straight from the atmosphere and store it permanently – either underground or in solid form.

For such techniques, MEPs said carbon must be stored for several centuries in order to be certified. By contrast, criteria for ‘carbon farming’ – emissions reduction from agricultural practices – must lead to emission reductions for a period of at least five years, the MEPs said.

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The distinction between CO2 removal techniques was welcomed by campaigners who say it will avoid confusion between activities which can be radically different.

“The EU removal certificates must be high-quality, effective in practice, and linked to appropriate use cases or we risk undermining our decarbonisation goals,” said Kathy Fallon from the Clean Air Task Force, a non-profit group. “The amendments adopted today are a step in the right direction,” she said.

Campaigners, at the end of the day, were in two minds. While Parliament had “substantially improved” the European Commission’s original proposal, it did not go far enough in limiting the use of carbon removals in voluntary offsetting schemes, said Carbon Market Watch, a green campaign group.

Moreover, current rules would allow the same removals to be counted twice – in private and public registries.

“It means that the same removals generated by a project could be used by corporations and also by countries towards their climate targets,” said Wijnand Stoefs from Carbon Market Watch (CMW).

“The use of carbon removals for offsetting in voluntary and compliance mechanisms must be ruled out completely,” CMW said.

The proposal for a carbon removal certification scheme will be voted on in the European Parliament’s plenary session during the third week of November. Meanwhile, EU member states are expected to adopt their position on the text in December 2023.

The proposal will become law after the two sides sit down and agree a common text during so-called trilogue negotiations involving the European Commission.

Carbon removals: Getting ready for certification

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledges that carbon removals from areas like forestry will be necessary to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and compensate for unavoidable pollution from areas like agriculture and hard-to-abate industrial sectors.

[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]

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