- How carbon farming could become a pitfall for climate targets
- BMWK wants to modernize Mining Act
- Commission proposal: no total combustion engine phase-out for trucks
- NATO Ministers of Defense meeting: discussions around Stoltenberg
- Almost €4 billion for tech start-ups
- Vulcan Energy to expand lithium mining in the Upper Rhine Graben
- Economic Resilience Index: 5th place for Germany
- Heads: Tanja Baerman – persuasion for Brussels and Bremen
Europe’s goal of emitting no more CO2 than can be stored by 2050 is to be achieved, among other things, by increasing the CO2 storage capacity of agricultural soils. Hopes for carbon farming are high – probably even too high. Timo Landenberger shows why the potential of natural CO2 storage methods may be overestimated and could ultimately do a disservice to the EU’s climate neutrality target.
To become climate-neutral, CO2 emissions from the transport sector must also be reduced. While the end of the combustion engine in passenger cars is in all likelihood sealed, it could still be used in trucks in the long term. The Commission will present its proposal for CO2 fleet limits for trucks today. Read more in the News.
The coalition government wants to amend the Federal Mining Act before the end of this legislative period. A project that could also contribute to the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, which the Commission intends to present at the beginning of March. But opinions differ as to how great the need for action really is for Germany as a mining location, as Leonie Düngefeld analyzes.
In today’s Heads, we would like to introduce Tanja Baerman. She is the bridge between Brussels EU politics and Bremen state politics and a convinced European.
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Lukas Scheid
Feature
How carbon farming could become a pitfall for climate targets
The EU wants to become climate-neutral by 2050. This means that no more greenhouse gases may be emitted than are stored. But there will still be emissions beyond 2050 – especially in agriculture, but also in some industrial sectors or in transport. Without the systematic capture and storage of CO2 from the atmosphere, therefore, the target cannot be achieved.
Currently, around 250 million metric tons of CO2 are stored in the EU – mainly in forests. The total is expected to grow to 310 million by 2030, according to the LULUCF target. “But that’s nothing compared to what we need to achieve by 2050,” says Christian Holzleiter of the EU Commission’s Directorate-General for Climate. “We expect up to 500 million tons of residual emissions. So we need to double the sink rate, and that’s a Herculean task.”
Natural sink rate declining
However, the natural storage capacity of forests is continuously decreasing due to droughts, extreme weather, pests and the growing demand for wood. And technical solutions (Carbon Capture and Storage, CCS) are far too expensive, far from ready for the market and thus far from actual widespread use.
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