AUTHORS: Krystyna Springer and Julia Bognar (IEEP)

A stable and healthy land carbon sink is crucial for the EU to meet its climate mitigation obligations and ensure resilience against escalating climate impacts. However, the EU land sink has been in steady decline, with the EEA concluding that the achievement of land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) target of -310 MtCO₂ removals by 2030 is “very unlikely”. As the legislative proposal for the 2040 climate target is finalised, the European Commission must adopt a precautionary approach by accounting for the uncertainties and challenges to land carbon removals when determining their contribution – alongside that of industrial removals affecting land use – to the net GHG target.

In the context of the upcoming legislative proposal for the 2040 EU climate target, this brief discusses the decline of the EU LULUCF sink due to increased harvests, ageing forests, and climate-driven disturbances, along with current projections revealing a gap between existing and planned policies and the 2030 LULUCF target. It also explores pathways modelled in the Commission’s Impact Assessment accompanying the Communication on the 2040 climate target, highlighting the role of the land sink and bioeconomy as key variables between the analysed core scenarios. Finally, it outlines the uncertainties associated with the LULUCF sink, highlighting how:

• The measurement and reporting of the land sector emissions and removals are particularly prone to high natural and statistical uncertainties.
• Significant uncertainties persist regarding the relative deployment of industrial removals with the highest level of technology readiness: BECCS (Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage), which may put further strain on the land sink, and its primary alternative, DACCS (Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage), which faces challenges related to high costs and technological feasibility.
• Future estimates of land carbon sinks may be overly optimistic, with the Commission’s own simulation of climate impacts indicating a wide range of possible outcomes, with carbon removals potentially falling well below expectations, despite the assumption of an ideal environment for the recovery of the carbon pool following extreme weather events.
• Uncertainties related to climate tipping points, which could accelerate feedback loops and lead to significant release of GHGs into the atmosphere, warrant a precautionary approach.

The analysis supports the recommendation that the EU should ensure the environmental integrity of the 2040 net target by pursuing more ambitious emission reductions, while setting separate conservative maximum contribution limits for land-based and industrial carbon removals.

Post-2030, a separate ambitious LULUCF target should be set to drive alignment between EU climate, biodiversity, and adaptation objectives. LULUCF carbon sequestration measures with co-benefits for biodiversity and other ecosystem services should be prioritised, including where these may result in lower removals than management strategies resulting predominantly in short-term carbon sink maximisation.

This document is the first part of our new series of policy briefs titled “2040 EU climate target: implications for the EU land sectors”.