EU plans major overhaul of climate targets for agriculture and forestry

The European Commission is planning a major overhaul of its climate policies that will have significant implications for Irish agriculture and forestry, according to its recently published 2030 Climate Target Plan.

The most significant change from a farming perspective will see agriculture, forestry and land use grouped together for the first time as one homogenous sector.

Under this new agriculture, forestry and land use sector (AFOLU), all C02 removed from the atmosphere via soils, trees and hedgerows will be set against the carbon emissions from agriculture for the first time to leave a net figure that represents the climate impact of agriculture, which is something farmers have long argued for.

In simple terms, the European Commission is accepting that agriculture and food production will always produce some level of carbon emissions

By changing its carbon accounting architecture in this way, the European Commission argues the expanded AFOLU sector will have the potential to become “rapidly climate-neutral by around 2035 in a cost-effective manner, and subsequently generate more removals than greenhouse gas emissions”.

In simple terms, the European Commission is accepting that agriculture and food production will always produce some level of carbon emissions. However, by creating a new AFOLU sector, the European Commission hopes to incentivise farmers and landowners to increase carbon removals in order to fully offset, or more than offset, the emissions from food production.

Net zero

In this way, agriculture could achieve net-zero carbon neutrality, while still maintaining food security across Europe. And, by 2035, the European Commission hopes the AFOLU sector will not only be carbon-neutral but will begin to remove more carbon than it emits.

If the European Commission continued to focus solely on emissions and did not include C02 removals by trees and soils, then there would need to be a dramatic cessation in farming right across Europe in order for the sector to meet its climate targets.

However, the European Commission is very clear that C02 removals from soils, trees and hedgerows will only be counted if it can be measured in a robust scientific and certified system.

Previous analysis by the Irish Farmers Journal shows Irish grasslands could be capturing anywhere between 4.5m and 9m tonnes of C02 eq from the atmosphere every year, while hedgerows could be sequestering up to 1.4m tonnes of C02 from the atmosphere each year.

However, these figures are included to only a limited extent in the current calculations for carbon sequestration in Ireland because we do not have a verified system in place to measure C02 removals by soils or hedgerows.

Under the current system, there is some recognition of carbon sequestration but it is limited. Ireland can claim up to 28m tonnes in carbon credits from C02 removals over the coming decade. However, this is almost totally linked to forestry, which is easier to calculate than soil carbon sequestration.

Additionally, because agriculture and the land use and forestry sector are treated as two separate entities, the carbon removals from land use and forestry are not counted against agricultural emissions.

A combined agriculture, land use and forestry sector, which is a change supported by the Climate Change Advisory Council of Ireland, would make more sense as both sectors are deeply intertwined.

However, even if this change takes place, it is important to note that Ireland’s land use and forestry sector is actually a net emitter of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as it stands today because the significant carbon losses from our degraded peat soils and bogs more than offset the carbon being removed by Ireland’s forest estate.

This path will require significant investment

This means Irish agriculture has a long way to go before it can claim net-zero carbon neutrality, even when including C02 removals from forestry.

This path will require significant investment in a verifiable process to measure carbon sequestration in Irish grasslands and hedgerows.

Bogs

It will also require a dramatic increase in the rewetting of our bogs to stop carbon being lost from the soil and there will need to be increased ambition when it comes to annual afforestation levels in Ireland.

The other major change mooted by the European Commission in its 2030 Climate Target Plan, is that it plans to integrate the transport and buildings/residential sectors into its emissions trading system (ETS), which puts a cap on the level of emissions for these sectors that steadily reduces over time.

The EU views its ETS as one of its most effective tools in reducing greenhouse gas emissions

The energy and heavy industry sectors are already included in this sector. The EU views its ETS as one of its most effective tools in reducing greenhouse gas emissions across Europe as it pushes investment into green energy, zero-emissions transport and improved energy efficiencies.

However, by including the transport and buildings/residential sectors in its ETS, this would effectively render the carbon budgets currently being drawn up by the Irish Government in its new Climate Bill as defunct.

Control

By including these sectors in its Europe-wide ETS, the European Commission takes control of the targets for these sectors and leaves the Government with very little by way of setting sectoral targets for emissions reductions.

In fact, once energy, transport and buildings/residential are excluded, agriculture will account for almost 80% of the remaining emissions in Ireland.

The European Commission has also hinted that it intends to set a Europe-wide price for carbon in order to ensure each member state contributes equally to its target to reduce C02 emissions by 55% by 2030.

In the recent budget, the Irish Government signalled that it will increase the price of carbon every year over the next decade until it reaches €100/t by 2030. However, the European Commission is concerned that increased climate ambition by a country like Ireland could leave room for other countries to contribute less to EU-wide targets, something which is known as the waterbed effect.

Europe-wide price

In order to negate this scenario, the EU plans to set a Europe-wide price for carbon, which would again render recent policy decisions in Dublin as defunct.