Beyond the EU NDC- Assessing efforts to be Europe’s climate leaders

Date: 20 March 2020

AUTHOR(S): WIJNAND STOEFS, ANDREI MARCU & ERIC WILCZYNSKI

In the context of the Paris Agreement, the European Union is increasing its efforts towards decarbonisation. Currently, the EU climate strategy is centred around three emissions reduction targets compared to 1990 levels: a cut of 20% of GHG emissions by 2020, at least 40% by 2030; and an implicit reduction of 80-95% by 2050. These targets have increasingly been put into question, as many stakeholders are pushing the EU to speed up its decarbonisation efforts and embrace the goal of climate neutrality by 2050.

The ‘Beyond the EU NDC’ report proposes a methodology which can be used to assess whether Member States and other stakeholders are undertaking efforts to go ‘beyond’ their respective 2030 targets, and what is their perspective on the 2050 strategy and the target of carbon neutrality.