Spread in climate policy scenarios unravelled
Analysis of climate policy scenarios has become an important tool for identifying mitigation strategies, as demonstrated in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III report. The key outcomes of these scenarios differ substantially not only because of model and climate target differences but also because of different assumptions on behavioural, technological, and socioeconomic developments. A comprehensive attribution of the spread in climate policy scenarios helps policymakers, stakeholders, and scientists to cope with large uncertainties in this field. Here, we attribute this spread to the underlying drivers using Sobol decomposition, yielding the importance of each driver for scenario outcomes.
As expected, the climate target explains most of the spread in greenhouse gas emissions, total and sectoral fossil fuel use, total renewable energy, and total carbon capture and storage in electricity generation. On the other hand, model differences drive variation of most other scenario outcomes. For example, in individual renewable and carbon capture and storage technologies, and energy in demand sectors. This reflects intrinsic uncertainties about long-term developments and the range of possible mitigation strategies. Only a few scenario outcomes, such as hydrogen use, are driven by other scenario assumptions, reflecting the need for more scenario differentiation.
This attribution analysis distinguishes areas of consensus as well as strong model dependency, providing a crucial step in correctly interpreting scenario results for robust decision-making.
Authors
Specifications
- Publication title
- Spread in climate policy scenarios unravelled
- Publication date
- 13 December 2023
- Publication type
- Article
- Publication language
- English
- Magazine
- Nature
- Product number
- 5413
