Norway pledges to become climate neutral by 2030

Oil- and gas-rich Norway will be the first country in Europe to go carbon neutral after it agreed to accelerate its original goal by 20 years to 2030. The country is also making considerable strides to conserve rainforests worldwide. André Anwar reports from Stockholm.

Norway is on track to becoming a role model for Europe and beyond with its pledge to become climate neutral by 2030. (Image credit: Bent Tranberg)

Norway is on track to becoming a role model for Europe and beyond with its pledge to become climate neutral by 2030. (Image credit: Bent Tranberg, flickr/Creative Commons)

 

It is a race against time: climate-neutral in just 14 years. On Tuesday the Norwegian parliament voted in favour of accelerating its goal of becoming climate neutral from 2050 to 2030. The initial plan was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 by 40 per cent compared to 1990 levels.

Europe’s first climate-neutral country

With the latest – and highly ambitious – target, Norway will easily become the first climate-neutral country in Europe. This week’s decision was based on an earlier proposal that climate neutrality should move forward by two decades “as long as there is a global and ambitious climate agreement in place in which other developed countries undertake major commitments”.

In the lead up to the vote, environmental experts from all parties agreed that the UN climate agreement signed by 175 countries at the end of 2015 in Paris is reason enough to accelerate the country’s climate target in accordance with the proposal.

Window to act closing rapidly

The Paris climate agreement set a target of limiting global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius – and even 1.5 C if possible – compared with pre-industrial levels. To achieve this goal, global greenhouse gas emissions will have to be slashed to zero between 2056 and 2060.

Such an ambitious goal is only possible with stringent and immediately implementable climate change policies because the window to positively influence global warming is closing rapidly, said the parliament.

Buying emission rights

At around 385,000 square kilometres in size and with a population of five million, Norway is a sparsely populated country. It is also a country where electric cars are used widely and electricity comes from hydroelectric power plants.

But despite its green image, Norway is also one of the leading exporters in the world for oil and gas, making it indirectly responsible for the harms inflicted on our climate.

Rather than implementing measures at home to make its climate balance neutral, Norway is instead looking to purchase emissions rights in the EU and abroad. This practice has already been introduced in the Norwegian economy because it is cheaper there to purchase emission rights than it is to reduce its own emissions.

Protecting rainforests

The Nordic country has also been long committed – and with an unusually large amount of money – to protecting rainforests. It recently became the first country in the world to make ending global deforestation one of its goals.

State-purchased goods or services may no longer contribute to deforestation, and even the state-owned oil fund, the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world and one of the world’s largest investors, has a policy in place targeting tropical deforestation.

“This is an important victory in the fight to protect the rainforest,” said Nils Ranum of Rainforest Foundation Norway. While a number of companies in recent years have agreed to refrain from procurements of goods linked to the destruction of the rainforest, “until now, this has not been matched by similar commitments from governments”.

You may also like...

Leave a Reply