PBL research supports Climate Conference Madrid (COP25)

On current unconditional pledges, the world is heading for a 3.2°C temperature rise, according to the 2019 edition of UNEP’s annual Emissions Gap Report. Technologies and policy knowledge exist to cut emissions, but transformations must begin now. Researchers at PBL were among the leading and contributing authors of this study.

The PBL Climate Pledge NDC tool addresses the following three key questions:

• What are the countries’ emissions projections for the NDCs/INDCs for 2030?
• Will the projected aggregated impact of the fully implemented NDCs/INDCs on global emissions, for 2030, be sufficient to achieve the target of staying well below 2 °C / 1.5 °C?   
• Are countries on track to meet their 2020 pledges and NDCs/INDCs for the period up to 2030?

To address these questions, the tool shows the projected impact of the emission reduction proposals (2020 pledges or NDCs/INDCs) and current policies, per country and globally, on greenhouse gas emission, up to 2030. This tool analyses the mitigation components of the NDCs/INDCs of 114 of the 189 Parties.

The Paris Agreement’s objective is to keep global warming to well below 2 ˚C or even 1.5 ˚C. Now, 4 years after Paris, the question arises whether countries are indeed doing enough to achieve this objective? What are the possible impacts of the promises and national climate policies? PBL hosts the interactive ‘Global stocktake tool’, a tool designed to measure progress towards the climate goals formulated in the Paris Agreement.

G20 nations are collectively not on track to meet their Paris Agreement commitments, but they have huge opportunities to undertake rapid and deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, according to new UNEP report, authored by experts of NewClimate Institute with input of research institutes, including PBL. An advance chapter of the 2019 Emissions Gap Report shows that G20 members, which account for around 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions, are not yet taking on transformative climate commitments at the necessary breadth and scale. The chapter released ahead of the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit 2019.

Although the ambition levels shown by cities, regions and business are high and will go a long way towards meeting the Paris Agreement goals, the bottom-up efforts still need to manifest themselves and can be increased by working more closely together with national governments.

There is strong interdependency between the use of food, energy and water resources and it is closely linked to environmental challenges, such as climate change and loss of biodiversity. These linkages are expected to become even more important with an increasing demand for these resources. In a new set of scenarios and visualisations, these relationships are explored in more detail for no-policy cases and for the implementation of various response options, such as dietary changes and stringent climate policy.

Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have increased at an annual rate of 1.5%, over the last decade, with only a slight slowdown from 2014 to 2016. In 2018, the growth in global greenhouse gas emissions resumed at an annual rate of 2.0%, reaching 51.8 gigatonnes in CO₂ equivalent (GtCO₂ eq) excluding land-use change and 55.6 GtCO₂ eq including land-use change

This report by NewClimate Institute, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) provides an overview of projected greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 25 major emitting countries/regions up to 2030, taking into account the emission trajectories based on current policies and the implementation of nationally determined contributions (NDCs). The report concludes that 12 out of the 25 countries and regions analysed are not on track to achieve the NDC targets they have set for themselves. This report updates the 2018 report, and for the first time presents additional key indicators next to greenhouse gas emissions.