Farming must pay for its emissions, says EU chief climate scientist

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The EU’s chief climate scientist has warned that the bloc will miss its climate targets if it does not force the agricultural sector to pay for its greenhouse gas emissions.

The remarks came as the world’s fastest-warming continent suffered severe flooding throughout central Europe in an example of extreme weather events that scientists say are exacerbated by climate change.

Ottmar Edenhofer, chair of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, told the Financial Times that it would be “almost impossible” to achieve the European Commission’s proposed aim of cutting emissions by 90 per cent by 2040 without a levy on agricultural emissions.

“[Over] the last 15 years, the emissions in the agriculture sector remained quite stable,” Edenhofer said, while other sectors had cut their climate impact. “The price signal is important because without the price signal, it is very unlikely that, basically, we can reduce emissions,” he added.

Farming makes up 12 per cent of the EU’s emissions, of which about two-thirds comes from meat and dairy production.

But it is one of the few sectors in the EU to have so far avoided strict climate legislation, including sectoral emissions reduction targets, in part because of farmers’ ability to stage widespread and disruptive protests.

Earlier this year, tractor blockades and demonstrations by farmers in many European capitals catalysed a rethink in the EU about how it was approaching efforts to decarbonise farms.

It prompted the commission to retract a proposed law on pesticides and delete recommended targets from a document outlining how the bloc would reach its 2040 goal.

But the issue of making either farmers or other parties in the food chain pay for emissions has risen up the agenda as Brussels starts to outline its priorities for the next five-year mandate starting later this year.

Denmark has also been lobbying Brussels to introduce an EU-wide system after it announced the world’s first carbon tax on farm emissions in June.

EU officials are weighing options including a levy on food processors that would also include incentives for farmers to use their land as a carbon sink.

But a report on the future of farming in the EU that stemmed from consultations between food and farming industry groups as well as environmental NGOs, published this month, said it was “premature” to come to a conclusion about pricing agricultural emissions.

The scientific advisory board, which evaluates the bloc’s climate policies, has also not yet officially weighed in on the debate but will publish a report on models for an agricultural emissions trading system next year.

Edenhofer said the board had found that to reach the 90 per cent goal, the EU would have to cut emissions by 171 megatonnes of carbon dioxide each year, roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of the Netherlands and Denmark combined.

As well as addressing agricultural emissions, the EU must also push harder to develop carbon removal technologies, such as carbon capture and storage, said Edenhofer.

“We are fully aware that not all of these technologies are ready for a dramatic upscaling but we feel this is something which needs more research and development and more deployment.”

He also warned that solar radiation modification, a controversial technology that involves reflecting the sun’s rays back into space, was a “poor substitute for mitigation” as it would not address the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere.

But he added: “I’m aware that many countries are discussing this . . . Internationally this will become an important debate.”

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