mobanmarketLONDON — Brexit could liberate the U.K. from the EU’s climate policies, allowing it to forge ahead with much more ambitious commitments of its own.
For the remaining EU27, the U.K.’s departure next year risks throwing its internal climate negotiations into disarray.
An early glimpse into that post-Brexit world starts Monday, when international negotiators meet in Bonn, Germany, for two weeks of talks to prepare for the U.N.’s December COP24 summit in Katowice, Poland.
Looming over Bonn is the international pressure on the EU to up all its targets to meet the secondary goal of Paris to keep warming at no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. It’s an issue for the EU’s upcoming mid-century strategy for tackling emissions, something required of all signatories of the Paris climate agreement by 2020.
The European Union’s current goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions were set in 2014, predating the 2015 Paris accord, and are geared toward limiting global warming to 2 degrees by 2100. The bloc agreed then to a target of reducing emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030 and 80-95 percent by 2050, compared to 1990 levels.
Normally, the U.K. would be an influential player, as one of the EU’s heavy lifters on emissions cuts and a big member in a group of Northern and Western Europeans calling for tougher measures. But Brexit risks sidelining Britain from the EU27 during the bloc’s negotiations, tipping the balance within the EU toward more resistant members like Poland.
“If the U.K. leaves the Union, then yes, the climate-ambitious member states, as a group, will lose a very important partner,” said a diplomat from one of those more ambitious EU countries.
The problem is timing. EU leaders in March called on the European Commission to propose a draft 2050 climate strategy in the first quarter of 2019.
That, however, means the EU’s negotiations on the final strategy would stretch past March 29, 2019, when the U.K. leaves the EU, into the post-Brexit transition period when Britain would lose its voice at the EU table. Its absence risks deepening the division among the remaining EU27, while Britain can continue strengthening national laws that already supersede bloc-wide policies.
“The rest of Europe is going to have to establish, post Brexit, a new consensus on climate change,” said Shane Tomlinson, a director at the environmental think tank E3G. “That is going to mean some very tough conversations with some of the less ambitious countries, particularly the Eastern member states.”
Going it alone
Splits are already beginning to show, both between Britain and the EU and among the other 27.
London is making a show of continuing to up climate efforts on its own, most recently by announcing in April that it will ask an independent committee to review the country’s 2050 goals in light of forthcoming United Nations science on the 1.5-degree goal.
That puts Britain ahead of its G7 and EU counterparts.
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“This decision to review Britain’s long-term climate target sends a strong message to the EU and other big economies that London is committed to the Paris climate agreement, and now it’s time they too considered what more they can do,” said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and France’s climate ambassador at the 2015 Paris summit.
Some EU members are also ramping up their own efforts — like the Swedish and Finnish goals to become carbon neutral by 2045. France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Portugal, Luxembourg and Germany made a joint call last week for a strategy that looks at boosting the EU’s goals, both in the long and nearer terms. Sweden’s state secretary for climate action, Eva Svedling, said the EU should aim for carbon neutrality by 2050, “even before scientific studies show that this is necessary.” Dutch Economic and Climate Affairs Minister Eric Wiebes instead urged the bloc to raise its 2030 emissions reduction goal to 55 percent, from 40 percent.
But that suggestion won’t sit well with Poland, which argues that the EU’s targets already match the Paris accord and the focus should be on fulfilling them before discussing further steps.
“The challenge to make the Paris agreement successful is to make sure that all major economies adopt targets as ambitious as the EU,” a Polish diplomat said.
EU leaders made clear that the Commission should look at what countries already plan to do when coming up with the 2050 strategy, the Polish diplomat added. “If, after aggregating the national plans, more efforts will be deemed necessary to deliver on our commitments under the Paris Agreement, the highest political level should discuss the tools we need to achieve such a level of ambition.”
Poland tends to be Europe’s most vocal opponent to tougher climate measures, but its Central and Eastern neighbors and other coal-reliant members often follow more quietly.
The global stage
Failure to set a 2050 strategy that can limit global warming to 1.5 degrees risks damaging the EU’s image as an international climate leader too — while again leaving the U.K. free to shine on its own.
As the world’s largest emitter after China and the U.S., Europe is on the spot to set an example. “The 2050 strategy ought to be the baseline that results in the updated [2030 commitment under the Paris climate agreement] in line with 1.5 degrees,” a negotiator for a small island nation said.
The U.K., meanwhile, stresses that it’s moving ahead regardless of what happens with Brexit.
“As the PM has said, tackling climate change and mitigating its effects for the world’s poorest are amongst the most critical challenges the world faces,” a U.K. government spokesman said. As for the future relationship with the Union: “Energy and climate policy are subject to the future economic partnership negotiations.”
Britain’s national laws could help maintain the country’s international standing, the small island negotiator said. “Raising climate ambition is a very clear way the U.K. can demonstrate its leadership in the world post Brexit. And with its Climate Change Act, it is very well-placed to do so.”
That said, splitting Britain and the EU risks weakening them both, Tomlinson noted: “By separating it out, obviously that weakens both Europe’s position and the U.K.’s. So you have to be careful you don’t lose influence in a more G2-driven world of China and the U.S.”