European Parliament fails to rule out carbon gambling!

The Carbon Removal Certification Framework still risks undermining real climate action in the EU

The European Parliament’s ENVI committee today voted overwhelmingly in favour of its proposal for the Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF).

The proposal aims to define removals and provide methodologies that can be used for the certification of activities, products, or the widely discredited carbon offsets. The European Parliament’s report not only extends the portfolio of false solutions, especially through the endorsement of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and agriculture emission reduction credits, aggravating land concentration, based on techno-fixes such as feed additives or nitrogen inhibitors, but also fails to address the core issue of the proposal:

Despite acknowledging that any removals certified under the CRCF must be “a complement to the irreversible and gradual reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors,” the European Parliament has left the door open for the certificates to be used by polluters to offset their emissions. The proposed limitations and safeguards in the proposal do not change the fact that the CRCF promotes the dangerous sale of the false promise that someone, somewhere, might at sometime in the future remove a ton of carbon from the atmosphere.

Allowing these certificates to be used as offsets in EU climate policy would be a major setback and is a sure way to torch the planet. Last year, the Real Zero Europe campaign and more than 200 groups and organisations called on the EU to “deliver real, deep, emissions cuts now,” instead of generating false confidence in unproven technofixes. Campaigners warn that the EU is shifting the focus away from the essential work of phasing out fossil fuels, and towards speculative technologies and impermanent land sequestration.

The European Parliament plenary vote on the ENVI committee’s report will take place on the 20th of November.