Taking stock of national climate policies to evaluate implementation of the Paris Agreement

Many countries have implemented national climate policies to accomplish pledged Nationally Determined Contributions and to contribute to the temperature objectives of the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2023, the global stocktake will assess the combined effort of countries. Here, based on a public policy database and a multi-model scenario analysis, we show that implementation of current policies leaves a median emission gap of 22.4 to 28.2 GtCO2eq by 2030 with the optimal pathways to implement the well below 2 °C and 1.5 °C Paris goals.

If Nationally Determined Contributions would be fully implemented, this gap would be reduced by a third. Interestingly, the countries evaluated were found to not achieve their pledged contributions with implemented policies (implementation gap), or to have an ambition gap with optimal pathways towards well below 2 °C.

This shows that all countries would need to accelerate the implementation of policies for renewable technologies, while efficiency improvements are especially important in emerging countries and fossil-fuel-dependent countries.

Authors

PBL Authors
Mark Roelfsema Heleen van Soest Mathijs Harmsen Detlef van Vuuren Michel den Elzen

Specifications

Publication title
Taking stock of national climate policies to evaluate implementation of the Paris Agreement
Publication date
29 April 2020
Publication type
Article
Publication language
English
Magazine
Nature Communications
Issue
11, Article number: 2096 (2020)
Product number
3945