Idea: Ajit Niranjan, Gianna-Carina Grün
Research, Data analysis, Data visualization, Writing: Ajit Niranjan
Editing: Tamsin Walker, Gianna-Carina Grün
You can read the story in English and German
DW is documenting the EU's progress towards its goal to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The tracker focuses on five policy areas: reduction of overall emissions, transition to renewable energy, transforming the agricultural as well as the transportation sector and improving buildings.
| Metric | Source |
|---|---|
| Overall emissions | European Environment Agency |
| Renewable energy | Eurostat |
| Solar and Wind | EMBER, SolarPowerEurope, WindEurope, International Energy Agency |
| Heat pumps | Regulatory Assistance Project, European Commission |
| Car emissions | European Environment Agency |
| Electric cars | European Environment Agency |
| Agriculture emissions | European Environment Agency |
The European Environment Agency collects data on greenhouse gas emissions.
The European Commission announced a target in November 2022 of a 57% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2030. This includes international aviation and land use change. The previous target of 55% did not include land use change.
An analysis by Climate Action Tracker found that the EU should strengthen its emissions reduction target to at least 62%, excluding land use change, and significantly increase its support for climate action in poorer countries to deliver its fair share toward the 1.5 degrees Celsius target. Current policies look set to bring emissions down just 36-47%.
The European Commission collects data on the share of renewable energy in final energy consumption.
In 2021, the European Commission proposed increasing the bloc's renewable energy target for 2030 from 32% to 40%. Then, after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the proposed target was increased to 45% in the REPowerEU Plan.
The climate think tank EMBER has modeled how much extra wind and solar power capacity must be added in the EU to be on track with a technology-driven 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway.
The pathway is just one possible route to net zero emissions, but the values by 2030 for wind and solar capacity line up with the RePower EU plan. The official EU 2030 values are 510 GW wind and 592 GW solar. Because these have not been broken down by yearly additions, we use the most-similar pathway in EMBER's modeling, which expects 476 GW wind and 600 GW solar.
Industry groups SolarPowerEurope and WindEurope have published data on the expected capacity additions of solar and wind, respectively, for the next 4-5 years.
The Regulatory Assistance Project, a think tank specializing in decarbonizing buildings, has estimated the number of heat pumps needed to reach the EU's climate goals.
It relies on modeling from the European Commission that shows the heat supplied by heat pumps will need to triple in the next decade if the EU is to meet its targets, from about 12 Mtoe to about 36 Mtoe, averaged across the scenarios.
The European Environment Agency collects data on the average emissions from new car registrations.
The European Commission intends to cut the average CO2 emissions from new cars by 55% by 2030, before hitting zero by 2035. That target was cast into doubt in March 2023, after Germany rowed back on its support and sought exemptions for so-called e-fuels — leading the EU Presidency to delay the vote.
The European Environment Agency collects data on the type of new car registration.
This shows the breakdown by car type, including electric cars, plug-in hybrid vehicles, and combustion engine cars.
The European Environment Agency collects data on emissions from agriculture.
The data is broken down by source: N2O from agricultural soils, methane from enteric fermentation, and manure.
Total emissions have stayed stable for the past 15 years. Based on national projections, a decline of 2% is expected by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. If currently planned additional measures are implemented, a 6% reduction is expected.