Civil society experts have evaluated existing climate mitigation measures and highlight the best practices and lessons that countries can learn from each other.
During the year, a group of civil society experts from Belarus, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, and Ukraine has analysed how our countries have implemented the European Green Deal through national climate plans and policies. For each policy measure, we evaluated how well the measure contributes to sustainable development towards carbon-neutral societies and how well it is implemented in the country or countries, where it is used. The result is an interesting comparison of the countries’ climate policies, an evaluation of the best existing climate mitigation measures, and proposals from civil society for stronger climate action. This article gives some highlights of the study, including what the countries can learn from each other and what measures civil society proposals include, in particular, to reduce fossil fuel use.
To compare the national climate plans and actions, we divided the plans and actions into six types:
- Climate laws and targets
- Climate taxation and VAT reductions, including road pricing/toll roads
- Energy efficiency
- Renewable energy and fuel shift, including electrificatio
- Transport
- Other important climate policies.
Climate laws and targets are widely used in the Nordic and Baltic countries and they provide important frameworks for climate action. A climate law is under development in Ukraine, but not in Belarus. Climate laws typically include:
- Climate targets.
- A process for regular evaluation of national climate actions and progress towards achieving climate targets, including an annual review process.
- Establishment of an independent climate council to oversee progress in achieving targets.
We find that the best practice is to include all of the above and that the most effective measure is laws adopted by the national parliament. This is the case in Denmark, Norway, and Lithuania.
Regarding targets, the civil society experts found that the best practice is ambitious targets in line with a fair contribution to keep global warming to 1.5ºC as well as using:
- Targets covering multi-annual budgets, for instance for five-year periods, not just a single target year.
- Targets covering the entire economy, but divided into separate targets for LULUCF and other emissions.
- Targets that do not allow use of credits for emission reductions outside the country, instead of national reductions.
- Supplementary targets for reduction of emission from imports, international aviation and shipping.
- Targets for climate drivers not covered by UNFCCC (vapour from aviation, black carbon, imported biomass). They can also include targets for emissions caused by other activities outside the country such as financing, as soon as robust methodology is developed.
No country includes all these elements in its climate targets. Denmark, Lithuania, and Ukraine include LULUCF and the target is only for national reductions. For Denmark, however, this is only the case for the national targets, while for Denmark’s non-ETS target to the EU (for sectors outside the EU emissions trading scheme), up to 8% reduction can be achieved by using flexibilities that are similar to buying GHG credits from other EU countries.
Regarding ambition, the highest 2030 target is the Danish 70% reduction between 1990 and 2030, while regarding greenhouse gas neutrality, the most ambitious is the Swedish target to achieve this in 2045.
Carbon taxes and tax/VAT reductions are important policy instruments to “make the polluter pay” and to drive climate action. They are widely used in the Nordic-Baltic countries, including:
- Carbon/GHG tax for sectors outside EU-ETS,
- Carbon/GHG tax for sectors in sectors covered by EU-ETS are being introduced
- Taxes on HFCs & other strong greenhouse gases
- Aviation passenger taxes
- Tax/VAT reduction/exemption for public transport
- Road pricing and payment for driving in cities
Taxes should be sufficiently high to drive action to reduce emissions without the need for long-term subsidies for alternatives. For taxes on households, compensation for low-income households may be necessary, preferably in the form of direct support, or as a minimum consumption level for taxation of low-income households.
Across the various climate taxes, Denmark will lead the way when current plans for an aviation passenger tax and GHG taxes are introduced inside and outside the sectors covered by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Regarding road pricing, Norway and Sweden lead with way with payments to enter main cities.
The best practice includes combining taxes with policies to promote alternatives, such as improving trains in combination with aviation taxes.
Energy efficiency is the first priority, and policies and measures are important to drive the rapid reduction of emissions in sustainable ways. EU legislation is driving energy efficiency in every country, while national initiatives are strengthening the push for energy efficiency in most of the countries that have subsidies. One forward-looking national policy is a limit on lifecycle emissions from new buildings, a measure that combines energy efficiency in the use phase with energy efficiency and low emissions in the construction phase. Such a measure has been introduced in Denmark, but currently with too high limits to have a large effect.
Renewable energy and shifting fuel use from fossil fuels to renewables are other important policies. We identified the following relevant policies and measures in use in the countries:
- Renewable energy targets.
- Siting of wind and solar parks.
- Support for local energy communities.
- Subsidy for solar energy.
- Phase out fossil-fuel-based heating, replacing it with heat pumps, district heating.
- Emission-free construction sites, as now required in some Norwegian towns.
- Support for electric cars, preferably with the same support for all cars in a socially just way.
- Stop the sale of new fossil-fuel-driven cars, as Norway is planning from 2025.
- Subsidy for electric shipping, including ferries, fishing boats and smaller cargo ships.
- Support for hydrogen, but only for green hydrogen and only for use in hard-to-abate sectors as hydrogen production incurs losses and is generally less efficient than direct electricity use (in transport for instance).
- Biomass diversification, in particular to reduce/avoid local air pollution (not a measure to reduce fossil fuel, but still important).
Correctly used, all these policies can become best practices.
Transport policies are important to break the trend of ever-increasing transport, which makes it very hard to achieve a real phase-out of all GHG emissions in transport. Some of the main policies are:
- Bicycle infrastructure support, which is supported in most countries, but in some countries not effectively enough.
- Support for public transport, which is provided in most countries, but in some countries at an inadequate level to make it a success.
- Support for international trains and night trains, for instance Sweden has introduced new night train services to Germany.
- Above-mentioned taxation of fossil fuels
- The best practice is a combination of all these policies, and also includes land-use planning.
The above policies and measures were analysed in the study, but we also found other good mitigation measures:
- Reduction of food waste.
- Policies for more plant-based food.
- Agricultural policies to reduce emissions from agriculture and agricultural inputs, such as fertiliser.
Increasing carbon stocks through ecosystem restoration, soil protection measures, preventing forest degradation, restoring degraded land, reducing the area of ploughed land etc. - Sufficiency policies to promote more sustainable lifestyles, reducing transport demands, housing size, consumption, etc.
- Circular economy policies to reduce the climate footprint of consumption.
Not all mitigation measures are good, and we identified some mitigation measures that do NOT lead to good climate solutions:
- Nuclear power, as it is a risky and very expensive technology.
- Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Given the costs and technological risks, CCS has the potential to slow down climate action and should not replace other, more reliable solutions.
- Liquid biofuels with high life-cycle GHG emissions.
This analysis is part of the project “Better Green Deal with CSO policy proposals, visions and scenarios for best mitigation policies for Baltic Sea Countries and Ukraine”, which also includes scenarios and visions for Lithuania, Latvia, and Belarus.
The project partners are INFORSE-Europe (coordinator), Norges Naturvernforbundet, AirClim in Sweden, Circular Economy in Lithuania, Latvian Green Movement, Ekokoncepcija in Lithuania representing civil society — Ecohome NGO in Belarus, and Ecoaction in Ukraine. The project is supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers, AirClim and INFORSE-Europe.
Fact sheets and reports with results are available here. The results were presented to the Nordic Council’s Committee for a Sustainable Nordic Region on 25 June 2024.
