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On Monday, the European Council adopted its position on the Green Claims Directive (hashtag#GCD), paving the way for negotiations with the European Parliament.
🚓 The GCD aims to regulate environmental claims made by companies, ensuring they are substantiated by credible and verifiable methods to limit greenwashing. Check out the comments for a blog I previously wrote on the GCD.
👀 The GCD matters a lot: done well, the GCD could increase consumer trust and financing for carbon dioxide removal (hashtag#CDR). Done badly, it could actually exacerbate greenwashing by giving dodgy environmental claims a public stamp of approval.
👏 So how is the Council’s position? The main catastrophe has been averted: compensation claims or offsets are now allowed (shout out to Negative Emissions Platform and Elisabeth Harding for successfully rallying the troops behind this one). The proposal now also includes clear links to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (hashtag#CSRD).
👎 However - unlike the EU Parliament (see comments) - the position falls short of specifying what type of offsets can be used, potentially opening the door to dodgy emission reduction offsets. It also does not mention the like-for-like principle (fossil emission -> permanent removal, temporary emission -> temporary removal).
🗓 So what’s next? Now that both the Council and the Parliament have finalised their position, we are ready to head into the Trilogue negotiations. Realistically, these will only start towards the end of 2024 and could be finalised in 2025.
👉 It will be crucial for the CDR sector to keep pushing for allowing only high-quality CDR to offset fossil emissions. Anything else will dilute the effectiveness of the GCD and potentially lead to more, instead of less, greenwashing. Follow and support Carbon Gap in particular, who have been doing outstanding work on this file.
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