But global warming is now taking a backseat to economic woes and the war in Ukraine. Governments seem not to be in a hurry to start a discussion on new climate targets. While a handful of EU countries, Denmark among them, have endorsed a 90 percent target for 2040, others, including Poland, aren’t yet ready to do so.
A discussion over whether to even mention the Commission’s 90 percent recommendation in the EU’s COP29 negotiating mandate pushed ministerial discussions late into the night in October, with the figure ultimately scrapped from the document.
The Polish official suggested that a 2040 target wasn’t necessary to agree on a 2035 plan. “We could just draw a straight line from our 2030 target to the 2050 target.”
But that would lead to a less ambitious 2035 figure than if the target is derived from a 90 percent reduction goal in 2040 — roughly 66 percent versus 72 percent, by POLITICO’s back-of-the-envelope calculation. Predictably, more climate-forward EU countries don’t like that approach.
Some worry that Poland — the bloc’s foremost climate laggard — wants to delay the 2040 discussion as long as possible. The country holds presidential elections in May.
If the 2040 proposal is left for the Danish Council presidency to deal with, the EU may not be able to present its new climate plan before COP30 starts in November 2025, Aagaard warned. “Looking at the time frame, we take over only in July, so there is a very short window to when we need to conclude and send our [plan] to COP,” he said.