The European Union wants to become carbon neutral by 2050. But there is no consensus on how to achieve this, especially when it comes to the agricultural sector. Euronews reporter Valerie Gauriat went to Denmark, which wants to introduce a carbon tax on livestock farming from 2030. A world first.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Dear politicians in Brussels, please tell Denmark that we have to make the carbon tax, of course, but do it in other countries also.
00:09The planet is suffocating, the climate disasters are becoming more and more devastating,
00:14and the fight against greenhouse gases is an imperative for Europe.
00:18But the means to achieve this are far from consensus, especially when it comes to the agricultural sector.
00:24I am in Denmark, one of the most ambitious countries in the EU in terms of the reduction of greenhouse gases.
00:30The last initiative of the Danish government is the establishment of a carbon tax on agriculture from 2030, a world first.
00:39The measure, which must still be voted on by the Danish parliament, is controversial.
00:44According to these detractors, it will have little effect on the carbon footprint of agriculture.
00:55The European Union wants to become carbon neutral by 2050,
00:59with the intermediate objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or GES, by at least 55% by 2030.
01:07But according to experts, GES emissions from agriculture should be reduced by half.
01:13The sector generates 11.4% of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe.
01:19Most of these rejections are due to farming.
01:22They mainly come from the digestion of food by cattle and sheep, and from the storage of manure by cattle and porcine.
01:30Add to this the emissions produced by the spread of chemical fertilizers,
01:34and the manure spread by farmers or excreted by cattle.
01:39France, Germany and Poland are the largest emitters of GES of agricultural origin in the European Union.
01:46But Denmark, a major exporter of dairy and pork products, is no exception.
01:52Agriculture is the second source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country, after energy.
02:05Agriculture occupies more than half of the territory of Denmark, an area almost entirely dedicated to farming.
02:12I am here in one of the porcine farms of the Silland region, which is with cattle farming.
02:20These are the main targets of the carbon tax that the government wants to impose on farming,
02:26a measure whose effectiveness does not convince at all.
02:30The landowner is responsible for the Danish Association for Sustainable Agriculture.
02:36On this farm we have 800 sows, they produce around 28,000 pigs a year.
02:41I sell the pigs when they are 30 kilos to Germany and Poland and other countries,
02:46because I get the best price on that market.
02:49I can say we use the best technology to keep the pollution as low as possible.
02:54These pigs are three weeks old.
02:56The crate here in here is very clean all the time because the floor is open,
03:01so the poo-poo, it goes down to the floor.
03:04And under the floor we have a technology with some pipes that cool the manure all the time,
03:10and it makes some energy.
03:12So we use the energy from cooling the manure to heat up the house for the small pigs,
03:17which is a really good idea and good for the environment.
03:21We don't have this pollution up there, so we don't have the steam,
03:25the damp of the nitrogen going to the system, to the ventilation we have up here and out in the air.
03:34Here we have the manure tanks.
03:36This one, we just got a new top on, so we don't get any pollution to there.
03:40There's also a lot of gas from methane going up, so this is stopping that.
03:46And the other tank, we have to change the top because it was old.
03:52Now I know where the smell comes from.
03:54Now you know where the smell comes from.
03:56We use the manure from the pigs in the fields, so also there it's going around in the system.
04:05And we also have a plan of taking the manure to a place where they can make energy out of it.
04:1140% of all the gas in Denmark is from biogas,
04:15which means that we take the manure from the cows and the pigs and put them to a factory,
04:20so they put out to the consumers, to the citizens.
04:27According to the farmer, the introduction of the new tax will be counterproductive.
04:32Everybody, especially Danish farmers, we want to be the greenest and the best.
04:36If we get the tax, we'll have problems to keep doing that because we cannot invest in the green technology.
04:43This is the only country who wants to make taxes, and taxes is not good from the market.
04:48If we get a carbon tax, I'm not going to be competitive to the other countries,
04:52so I'm going to stop having my sows.
04:54I'm still going to have the fields and trying to get along,
04:58but I'm not being able to have a production like this.
05:04Do you have one question to ask to Brussels?
05:07Yeah. Dear politicians in Brussels, please tell Denmark that we have to make the carbon tax, of course,
05:14but do it to all the other countries also.
05:16All the countries in the world would be best, but at least in Europe, that we can do it at the same time.
05:21It's not good for one small country who is really dependent on the competition.
05:29The Danish Parliament, behind me, will soon have to vote on the new tax that the government wants to impose
05:41on the greenhouse gas emissions of agriculture.
05:44What inspired Europe?
05:46Brussels, in any case, has renounced a carbon pricing of agricultural origin.
05:51I submitted these points to one of the experts of the European Scientific and Consultative Council on Climate Change in Copenhagen.
06:01If we look at the emissions from agriculture in Europe, since 2005, very little has happened in terms of reducing emissions.
06:11And one of the reasons is that there's no incentive for farmers to do so.
06:18So if you think, for example, of how you handle manure, technologies to treat it better, they're costly.
06:24If you actually had a gain by paying, in the Danish context, less of a tax by installing these things,
06:30you would have an incentive to actually install it.
06:33There are some farmers in Denmark who do not agree with this new tax,
06:39and they say that as long as the EU is not harmonized in this field,
06:44it will create a competitive disadvantage for Danish farmers, who will eventually move out.
06:49So do they have a point?
06:51One of the critics of implementing a greenhouse gas tax in Denmark, in agriculture,
06:56has been a concern of what is called leakage, so that the production, and thereby the emissions, move to other countries.
07:02And that's where the EU, as such, has a large role, because the more common policy we have in Europe,
07:10the less leakage there will be for the individual countries, because other countries also have to reduce emissions.
07:15I think we need to implement some sort of pricing mechanism in agriculture, to give an incentive to reduce emissions.
07:22And the other thing is to look into the common agricultural policy, and see how we can revise that.
07:28Because as it is today, a large amount of the subsidies are going to greenhouse gas intensive productions,
07:36and not to less carbon intensive production forms.
07:42Under the pressure of farmers, the European Executive has in any case renounced this year
07:47to integrate specific measures for agriculture in its climate goals for 2040.