Leak: EU looks to change how livestock climate emissions are measured

The EU is considering an overhaul of how it measures methane emissions from livestock, according to a leaked draft of the European Commission’s Sustainable Livestock Strategy.

The Commission claims existing emissions accounting methods are too blunt, and treat methane too much like CO2. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas but has a far shorter atmospheric life.

It singles out tools used by the IPCC, the world’s leading climate body, to calculate agricultural emissions, arguing they treat cattle as effectively interchangeable regardless of breed, feeding regime, or how a farm is managed.

The proposal echoes an approach favoured by the livestock sector, which has for years advocated for a measurement called GWP* that treats stable livestock numbers as producing “no additional warming” over time even as the animals continue to emit methane.

Methane is responsible for more than a third of the global warming the planet has experienced to date, with agriculture the leading man-made source. The EU estimates that methane from livestock accounts for 12% of its greenhouse gas emissions.

The strategy, which sets out the bloc’s long-term direction for the sector, is expected to be presented in early July, when Ireland will take over the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU.

Ireland, which has the highest proportion of agricultural emissions of any EU member state, has previously said it wants to “advocate for the accounting of [methane] to be re-classified at EU and international level”.

Campaigners fear the proposed shift could downgrade livestock’s reported climate impact without requiring any meaningful reduction in animal numbers.

Earlier this year a group of 34 NGOs urged the Irish government not to use a ‘no additional warming’ approach when assessing methane’s contribution to global warming, arguing it “rests on the flawed assumption that current methane levels are acceptable.”

‘Biogenic’

The leaked draft - dated April 2026 and not yet finalised - endorses the idea that methane from livestock should be treated differently to fossil-fuel emissions because of its “biogenic nature... as part of a short-term carbon cycle,” a framing long pushed by the meat and dairy industry as grounds for lighter-touch climate accounting.

On this basis, the Commission says it will develop new, EU-specific “harmonised metrics” and farm-level monitoring tools aimed, the draft states, at reducing “uncertainty” in how Member States report emissions in their national greenhouse gas inventories.

Nitrates

The leaked draft also considers relaxing the Nitrates Directive, the EU law limiting how much manure and nitrogen fertiliser farmers can spread, to protect water quality.

An ongoing Commission evaluation of the directive, folded into a wider “simplification” push, is expected to consider whether further “flexibilities” could be introduced specifically for livestock farming, with the EU’s Nitrates Committee tasked with examining the question once the evaluation report lands.

‘Stress testing’

The document flags two further environmental laws for review: the Nature Directives, which underpin the EU’s protected-areas network, are being “stress-tested” with a report due by the end of 2026, while a separate review of the Water Framework Directive is also under consideration.

The European Commission were contacted for comment but failed to respond