Updated nationally determined contributions collectively raise ambition levels but need strengthening further to keep Paris goals within reach

Elzen, Michel den; Dafnomilis, Ioannis; Forsell, Nicklas; Fragkos, Panagiotis; Fragkiadakis, Kostas; Höhne, Niklas; Kuramochi, Takeshi; Nascimento, Leonardo; Roelfsema, Mark; Soest, Hanneke van; Sperling, Frank

doi:10.1007/s11027-022-10008-7

Cited by 59 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…This is due to multiple causes: (i) although the intensity targets of China's and India's NDCs still contribute largely to overall uncertainty, its impact is lower than before, as both countries do not have a range in their intensity targets anymore. In addition, China's nonfossil and peaking targets hold greater significance for NDC emissions projections as its intensity targets are already achieved under the current policies scenario [6,29]. (ii) The group of countries with updated NDC targets that could not be quantified now only covers less than 5% of global emissions [4].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For countries having only conditional NDC targets, unconditional NDC emission levels were assumed to equal to those from the current policies scenario. The impact of the full implementation of the NDCs on GHG emissions to 2030 was also projected using the IMAGE model as described in [6] supplementary text 2 presents the NDC targets for the G20 economies.…”

Section: Unconditional and Conditional Ndc Scenariosmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By September 2022, 169 countries had submitted new NDCs [4,5]. The new NDCs reduce the emission gap for achieving 2 • C and 1.5 • C, but are still insufficient to keep the temperature goals of the Agreement within reach [6][7][8]. There is also an implementation gap which refers to lack of implemented actions to reduce emissions and reach NDC targets [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The impact of policy and model uncertainties on emissions projections of the Paris Agreement pledges

Elzen

Dafnomilis

Hof

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Tracking progress towards the Paris Agreement climate goal requires understanding the 2030 emission levels implied by countries’ National Determined Contributions (NDCs). However, key uncertainties and assumptions impact greenhouse gas (GHG) emission projections implied by the NDCs. This study analyses this impact, both globally and for major emitting countries. We find that the assessed uncertainties markedly affect global GHG emission projections. Full achievement of NDC targets is estimated to result in a range of 46-60 GtCO2eq by 2030 (median estimate: 53 GtCO2eq). The uncertainty in measuring historical emissions, including land-use, as reflected by different datasets is the most important contributing factor. This is followed by two equally important factors globally: socio-economic baseline uncertainty and uncertainty about the emissions implied by current policies in case NDCs are less ambitious than these. Overall, the impact of policy uncertainty (i.e. uncertainty resulting from conditionality of or ranges in NDC targets and uncertainty in emissions resulting from current policies) is about equally important as model/technical uncertainty (i.e. uncertainty in historical emissions and socio-economic baseline variations). This new insight is important for decision makers and researchers because a larger share of the total uncertainty is now attributable to aspects that can be influenced by policy decisions compared to previous analyses of NDC uncertainty.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Unconditional and Conditional Ndc Scenariosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The impact of policy and model uncertainties on emissions projections of the Paris Agreement pledges

Elzen

Dafnomilis

Hof

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…The NDC scenario assumes full achievement of both conditional and unconditional NDC targets (including the new and updated NDCs) by 2030 (cut‐off date: December 31, 2021) 27,28 . The scenario assumes the CurPol scenario is implemented first.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Achieving net‐zero emissions targets: An analysis of long‐term scenarios using an integrated assessment model

Dafnomilis

Elzen

Vuuren

2023

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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More than 100 countries have communicated or adopted new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and net-zero target pledges. We investigate the impact on global, national, sectoral, and individual greenhouse gas emissions projections under different scenarios based on the announced NDCs and net-zero pledges using the IMAGE integrated assessment model. Our results show that while the net-zero pledges, if implemented, could be an important step forward, they are still not enough to achieve the Paris Agreement goals of well below 2 • C and preferably 1.5 • C by the end of the century. Still, our net-zero scenarios project significant all-sector decarbonization, in particular, electricity; however, certain sectors like industry and transport prove hard to completely abate.

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“…Yet, it is still necessary to bridge current realities with possible futures as enshrined in international treaties. It is clear that there remains a large emission gap between current aggregated national climate pledges and pathways consistent with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement (den Elzen et al, 2022;Ou et al, 2021). At the same time, Parties to the UN Framework for Climate Change (UNFCC) have increasingly put forward ambitious long-term net-zero targets, bringing the 1.5°C goal in sight if those long-term pledges were to be met in full and combined with more ambitions near-term mitigation (Höhne et al, 2021;Meinshausen et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fairness and feasibility in deep mitigation pathways with novel carbon dioxide removal considering institutional capacity to mitigate

Gidden

Brutschin

Ganti

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Questions around the technical and political feasibility of deep mitigation scenarios assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have increasingly been raised as have calls for more directly analyzing and incorporating aspects of justice and fairness. Simultaneously, models are increasing the technical representation of novel carbon-dioxide removal (CDR) approaches to provide policy-relevant analyses of mitigation portfolios in the context of the rising number of net-zero CO2 and GHG targets made by parties to the Paris Agreement. Still, in most cost-effective mitigation scenarios developed by Integrated Assessment Models, a significant portion of mitigation is assumed to take place in developing regions. We address these intersecting questions through analyzing scenarios that include Direct Air Capture of CO2 with Storage (DACCS), a novel CDR technology that is not dependent on land potential and can be deployed widely, as well as regional variations in institutional capacity for mitigation based on country-level governance indicators. We find that including novel CDR and representations of institutional capacity can enhance both the feasibility and fairness of 2°C and 1.5°C high-overshoot scenarios, especially in the near term, with institutional capacity playing a stronger role than the presence of additional carbon removal methods. However, our results indicate that new CDR methods being studied by models are not likely to change regional mitigation outcomes of scenarios which achieve the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement. Thus, while engineering carbon removals like DACCS may play a significant role by midcentury, gross emissions reductions in mitigation pathways arriving at net-zero CO2 emissions in line with 1.5°C do not substantially change. Our results highlight that further investment and development of novel CDR is critical for post-net-zero CO2 mitigation, but that equitable achievement of this milestone will need to arrive through technical and financial transfers, rather than by substantial carbon removals in developed countries.

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Updated nationally determined contributions collectively raise ambition levels but need strengthening further to keep Paris goals within reach

Cited by 59 publications

References 34 publications

The impact of policy and model uncertainties on emissions projections of the Paris Agreement pledges

The impact of policy and model uncertainties on emissions projections of the Paris Agreement pledges

Achieving net‐zero emissions targets: An analysis of long‐term scenarios using an integrated assessment model

Fairness and feasibility in deep mitigation pathways with novel carbon dioxide removal considering institutional capacity to mitigate

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