On the 30th November, the European Commission will deliver a proposal for a new carbon removals (CDR) certification framework in Europe. This is great news for the fossil industry, and bad news for people and the climate.
-> For more information, see our analysis document here (Français, Español, Italiano)
Future CDR cannot serve as a substitute for deep emissions reductions now. To stay below 1.5 °C of warming, requires real, just, and immediate reductions. A strategy to overshoot 1.5°C and bet on temporary removals and currently non-existent technologies to return someday to safe global temperatures is a strategy of climate disaster.
Europe has a huge historical responsibility to support a just transition for the Global South, and to rapidly bring emissions down to Real Zero at home. We know what Real Zero looks like: a just and equitably managed phase-out of fossil fuels; an energy transformation to real, fair, democratic, and sustainable renewable energy; support for small-scale farmers and a just transition of food and agricultural systems towards agroecology for food sovereignty; close-to-nature forestry practices; and the redirection of public subsidies, away from fossils, to support these measures.
Getting to Real Zero and staying below 1.5 °C of warming requires rejecting any European Commission proposal for certifying carbon removal offsets in a failed carbon market. It requires halting emissions and restoring ecosystems now.
Real Zero Europe is a campaign launched by Biofuelwatch, BUND / Friends of the Earth Germany, CCFD - Terre Solidaire, Corporate Europe Observatory, Center for International Environmental Law, Corporate Accountability, European Coordination Via Campesina, Fern, Food & Water Action Europe, Friends of the Earth Europe, Friends of the Earth International, Global Forest Coalition, Heinrich Böll Siftung, Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy, and ReCommon
