Climate laws

Iran war shows EU must ‘stay the course’ on climate laws, Dutch minister says

Dutch climate minister says rising energy prices show why Europe must cut reliance on fossil fuels.

By Zia Weise

The European Union must respond to the war-driven spike in fossil fuel prices by doubling down on the fight against climate change, a top Dutch official told POLITICO.

As the European Commission prepares to unveil new policies aimed at cutting the bloc’s planet-warming emissions by 2040, Dutch Climate Minister Stientje van Veldhoven argues that Brussels should “stay the course” on its climate laws and eschew extensive use of carbon offsets — credits that allow countries to compensate for their own pollution by paying for cuts in emissions elsewhere.

With the war in Iran driving up energy prices, “I think we have every argument, every reason to make sure that we become less dependent on fossil fuels,” she said in an interview just after returning from Colombia, where the Netherlands co-hosted an international summit to transition away from oil, coal and gas last week.

“The current energy crisis does show us that we have a choice to make. To what extent do we want to remain vulnerable to political choices made elsewhere in the world that have a huge impact on our socioeconomic structure?” she added. “We have a choice whether we want to invest in making ourselves independent of this kind of dynamic, and that means investing in the transition.”

Van Veldhoven, who is from the social-liberal branch of Prime Minister Rob Jetten's minority centrist coalition government, said the Netherlands is pushing for a predictable emissions-cutting pathway toward 2040 to ensure companies can plan their investments.

“In taking those steps in a predictable manner, we also make sure that we don't leave the technology race just to China or to the U.S., or India,” she said. “You see that in countries all around the world, the implementation of green energy projects is rising. So we have to ensure that we stay the course, otherwise we will fall behind.” 

In addition, the Jetten government advocates for measures to reduce planet-warming pollution from agriculture as part of the upcoming climate legislation package, something the EU has so far side-stepped to avoid drawing the ire of powerful farming associations. 

For Van Veldhoven, the geopolitical upheaval is also an argument to “handle with care” any investments in international carbon credits, which allow one country to pay for emissions-cutting projects in another and count the resulting greenhouse gas reductions toward its own climate target. 

Despite the resistance of some countries, including the Netherlands, the EU agreed last year to allow the use of such offsets in its new goal to reduce emissions by 90 percent by 2040. Up to 5 percentage points of the target and potentially more can be outsourced to other countries via carbon credit purchases from 2036 onward. 

The Dutch government wants Brussels to put tough constraints on any such purchases, Van Veldhoven said, including by limiting their use to industrial sectors that are most difficult to decarbonize and excluding them from the bloc’s carbon market. The Commission should also still consider a maximum use lower than 5 percentage points, she added. 

“The money that we invest [in carbon credits] in the end, it is an amount which you invest in other economies and not in the European economy,” she warned. 

“These investments in decarbonizing our own energy mix are absolutely critical, not just for climate, but also for Europe's independence,” she added. “And the more we delay making those investments … the more vulnerable we remain, also in the context of the current geopolitical climate.”