Impact on the EU 2030 climate target of including LULUCF in the climate and energy policy Framework. Report prepared for Fern and IFOAM

Summary

The European Union (EU) has a target to reduce emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2030. This is an economy-wide target and therefore includes the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector. The EU is currently consulting stakeholders on how to integrate LULUCF into the EU’s 2030 Climate and Energy Framework.
The LULUCF sector has several particularities and differs from energy, industrial processes, waste and agriculture (non-CO2) emissions in a number of ways.2 Adequate rules are therefore essential to reflect the changes in LULUCF and to assess progress towards targets. The most specific particularity is that the sector includes activities that cause emissions but also can lead to carbon being taken up and stored (e.g. through biomass accumulation), referred to in this report as a ‘removals’, though the removal is not permanent. Currently LULUCF is a net sink in the EU, i.e. it removes more carbon than it releases, though this sink is projected to decline by 2030. Another particularity is that not all emissions and removals are directly human-induced. This is especially true for removals from forest management. One more general particularity is data uncertainty.
Average uncertainty ranges reported by Member States that are associated with estimates of the level of emissions and removals are relatively high (32 per cent) compared to emissions from fossil fuel combustion (1 per cent) for EU-15 countries.