Net zero risk in European climate planning: A snapshot of the transparency and internal consistency of Member States' NECPs

European countries are at high risk of missing their climate neutrality targets due to poor and vague national plans

A new report released today assesses the quality of information and the consistency of draft national energy and climate plans (NECPs) submitted to the EU by five Member States in June 2023, including Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. These plans were selected for analysis for giving a view of the largest economies across the geographic spread of the European Union, where plans were available.

Getting onto a climate neutral pathway in this critical decade of action requires coherent and integrated cross-sectoral planning for the near term, avoiding blind overreliance on limited resources, or bottlenecks with regards to critical infrastructure.

Julien Pestiaux, Lead Author 

The plans are supposed to lay out how countries intend to meet the EU energy and climate targets for 2030.

Transparency gaps of analysed Member States' plans

Focusing in particular on renewable electricity, renewable hydrogen, land use, bioenergy and the geological storage of carbon dioxide, ECNO’s report finds that the 

“analysed plans all fall short on policy detail and transparency”.

The report flags major shortfalls in the quality of information included in the plans, and warns that inconsistencies within and between the different plans present major risks to the EU’s ability to meet its climate neutrality targets.

The combined shortfall across all five countries on transparently planned emissions reductions analysed will be 101 MtCO2e (million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent) per year by 2030. This is more than Austria’s net annual emissions in 2021.

Italy

• Italy has the greatest transparency gap, with detailed planning lacking for emissions reductions of 44 million MtCO2e missing.
• There is a high risk of land overlap, with four times more indicators predicting a land use increase than indicators predicting a land us decrease. 
• The Italian NECP relies heavily on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology to stabilise emissions in the industrial sector. Alternative decarbonisation measures for the industry are not clearly stated, implying that CCS may be deployed not only to reduce inherent process emissions but also avoidable combustion emissions, which constitutes a risk of locking in fossil fuel dependency.

Spain

• The Spanish draft NECP provides the most detailed and thorough information regarding land management and land use change by 2030
• Many measures and actions are described to prevent forest fires and to maximise carbon sequestration. Reforestation and wetland restoration include quantitative targets.

Netherlands

• The Netherlands project a production of 2 billion cubic meters of biogas, which is not expected to fulfil future demand. Imports are therefore planned, but neither quantified, nor anticipated in terms of infrastructure development or partnerships.

Sweden

• Sweden’s planning gap is the lowest, applying to only 11 million MtCO2e.
• Sweden has one of the highest risk of land overlap, with four times more indicators predicting a land use increase than indicators predicting a land us decrease. 
• ECNO challenges the credibility of Sweden’s plans, which have poor quality of information. The plans have not been updated since the 2019 submissions under the prior administration, with the current government now considering scrapping its climate targets. 

Hungary

• The estimates of projected domestic hydrogen production are less than half of the anticipated demand in 2030 of more than 4 TWh, leaving a substantial gap potentially to be filled with imports, however the NECP does not provide sufficient information on the sourcing of the imports and limited clarity on the required infrastructure.
• Hungary plans on increasing the use of first-generation biofuels which poses a major risk, as increasing the reliance on energy crops puts it in potential competition with food production and sovereignty.