to achieve zero emissions,” said EU Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete. He said it was “completely possible” to do so by 2050, but it would require “lots of investments”. The EU aims to reduce CO2 emissions by 60 percent by 2050 as a key task.
The aim is EU to achieve “net zero” or “carbon neutrality” in the middle of the century – a balance between environmentally-generated harmful carbon vapours with an equivalent amount of compensation, including the purchase of carbon credits to cover the difference.
According to Cañete’s words, this objective will require a lot of investment and efforts, but it is fully achievable and necessary in regard to the desire of the US to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Limiting Global Warming.
This will require a systematic approach with zero and zero-emission vehicles, a strong development of the capacity of the continental rail network, a much more efficient organisation of the transport system based on digitisation, incentives for behavioural change, alternative fuels and smart infrastructure, as well as global commitments between major pollutants.
However, such methods, which are known collectively as “negative emission technologies”, would only be effective if they are combined with drastic efforts to reduce the current emission speed.
Denmark has already stated that it supports the European Commission’s requests to stop making new diesel and petrol cars since 2030. Britain can also reduce its emissions to “net zero” over the next three decades by increasing investment in technologies that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
There are currently ten scenarios for achieving this goal, three of which are most often cited as being possible. The “Shared efforts” scenario maintains a comparable level of effort across sectors without focusing on specific mitigation options. The Technology scenario highlights efficiency and innovative technological opportunities by increasing their implementation to the highest levels (e.g. energy efficiency, electrification, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage). This leads to halving energy consumption in 2050. Finally, demand-side measures are used in the demand-side scenario to reduce the overall consumption of key elements such as energy products, etc.
