“I can only speculate that Mr. Hoekstra is doing this to bring some more bad ideas into the target design — such as the inclusion of [international carbon] credits,” said Wölken. “This would open up tremendous loopholes instead of enabling emissions reductions at home.”
Greens MEPs have also told POLITICO they would reject the use of these credits, which would fund climate projects overseas and allow EU countries to count the reduced emissions toward their own targets.
Hoekstra said the trade war, unleashed overnight by U.S. President Donald Trump, would have further detrimental impacts on the climate effort.
“What that clearly does is [it’s] making a very difficult geopolitical context even more difficult, making a not easy economic context even more difficult and putting pressure on the whole system of international cooperation,” he said, but added that “regardless of the trade conversation with all its ramifications we can pursue the trajectory I had already embarked on.”
The 2040 climate target has a major bearing on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Brazil later this year. All countries are due to submit goals for 2035 before that summit and the EU’s target is viewed as a benchmark to pressure other large emitters, especially China.
Hoekstra would only say that he was “optimistic” that the EU would meet a revised U.N. deadline of September.
“Beyond the reputational damage to Europe’s status as a climate leader, this also puts the UNFCCC process at risk,” said Wölken.
This article has been updated.
