Mitigation Commitments and Fair Effort Sharing in a New Comprehensive Climate Agreement Starting 2020
Andrzej Ancygier, Jasmin Cantzler, Hanna Fekete, Markus Hagemann, Niklas Höhne, Daniel Kandy, Antje Kästner, Jan Kersting, Anja Köhne, Marie Lindberg, Florian Mersmann, Wolfgang Obergassel, Anne Siemons, Katja Schumacher, Hanna Wang-‐Helmreich, Timon Wehnert
November 2015
Mitigation Commitments and Fair Effort Sharing in a New Comprehensive Climate Agreement Starting 2020
The contents of this report are based on research conducted in the framework of the project „Minder-‐ ungsverpflichtungen und faire Lastenteilung in einem neuen umfassenden Klimaschutzabkommen ab 2020", conducted on behalf of the German Federal Environment Agency, FKZ: 3713 41 102. The views expressed in this paper are strictly those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the German Federal Environment Agency, nor of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. Contact Katja Eisbrenner,
[email protected] Ecofys, Am Wassermann 36, 50829 Köln, Germany Andrzej Ancygier,
[email protected] Climate Analytics, Friedrichstr. 231 -‐ Haus B, 10969 Berlin, Germany Jan Kersting,
[email protected] Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Breslauer Str. 48, 76139 Karlsruhe, Germany Niklas Höhne,
[email protected] NewClimate Institute, Am Hof 20-‐26, 50667 Köln, Germany Anne Siemons,
[email protected] Oeko-‐Institut, Schicklerstraße 5-‐7, 10179 Berlin, Germany Wolfgang Obergassel,
[email protected] Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy, Döppersberg 19, 42103 Wuppertal, Germany
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Mitigation Commitments and Fair Effort Sharing in a New Comprehensive Climate Agreement Starting 2020
Table of Content 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................. 4 2. Scope and method of the analysis ...................................................................................................................................... 5 3. Brazil ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 7 4. China ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 9 5. European Union ...................................................................................................................................................................... 11 6. India ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 13 7. Japan ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 15 8. Mexico ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 17 9. Morocco ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 10. Russia ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 21 11. South Africa ............................................................................................................................................................................ 23 12. United States of America .................................................................................................................................................. 25 Annex 1 – Full country chapters ........................................................................................................................................... 27 Annex 2 -‐ Method for calculation of “fair shares” ....................................................................................................... 161 Annex 3 -‐ Project specific assumptions ........................................................................................................................... 166 Annex 4 -‐ Calculation of mitigation potentials ............................................................................................................. 170 Annex 5 -‐ Combining Effort Sharing with Mitigation Potential ............................................................................ 176 Annex 6 -‐ Results of the delayed scenario for calculating fair shares and potentials ................................. 177 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................................................ 184
List of Figures Table 1: Comparison of INDC with Results for Effort Sharing Calculations for Brazil ...................................... 8 Table 2: Comparison of INDC with Results for Effort Sharing Calculations for China ..................................... 10 Table 3: Comparison of INDC with Results for Effort Sharing Calculations for the EU ................................... 12 Table 4: Comparison of INDC with Results for Effort Sharing Calculations for India ...................................... 14 Table 5: Comparison of INDC with Results for Effort Sharing Calculations for Japan ..................................... 16 Table 6: Comparison of INDC with Results for Effort Sharing Calculations for Mexico .................................. 18 Table 7: Comparison of INDC with Results for Effort Sharing Calculations for Morocco ............................... 20 Table 8: Comparison of INDC with Results for Effort Sharing Calculations for Russia ................................... 22 Table 9: Comparison of INDC with Results for Effort Sharing Calculations for South Africa ....................... 23 Table 10: Comparison of INDC with Results for Effort Sharing Calculations for the USA .............................. 26
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Mitigation Commitments and Fair Effort Sharing in a New Comprehensive Climate Agreement Starting 2020
1. Introduction The international community is in the process of developing a new climate agreement, to be adopted at the Paris Conference in December 2015 and to be applied starting in 2020. Countries’ mitigation contributions are one central element in the negotiations. By the end of October 2015, 128 Parties had submitted their “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs), reflecting 155 countries (in-‐ cluding the European Union member states), and covering around 87% of global emissions in 2010 (excluding LULUCF) and 88% of global population. Ever since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was agreed upon, the level of ambition as well as the fair balance between parties has been the linchpin of negotiations. The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform (ADP) again revolves around these questions: Can negotia-‐ tions ensure that aggregate action by parties suffices to achieve the jointly agreed goal to limit warm-‐ ing below 2°C – or even 1.5°C as called for by the most vulnerable countries, in light of current science? How can a fair and equitable distribution of effort be enshrined in the agreement? How to move for-‐ ward action on mitigation and adaption, and reconcile this with the pursuit of countries’ development aspirations and needs? To keep global warming to below a 2°C increase above preindustrial levels, as is the accepted goal in-‐ ternationally, the urgency and timing of mitigation is critical. The last Assessment Report by the Inter-‐ governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) included a calculation of permissible levels of emissions which allow a reasonable chance of staying below 2°C. For a more than 2/3 probability of staying be-‐ low 2°C, cumulative emissions since the period 1861-‐1880 would need to stay below 1000 GtC. This "carbon budget" is reduced to 800 GtC once non-‐CO2 forcing is accounted for. By 2011, already over 530 GtC has been emitted. Thus, only a third of the carbon budget is still available. A steep decrease of emissions throughout the 21st century is required to achieve the above mentioned goals (IPCC, 2013). So far, climate policy has not sufficiently responded to the challenge. For example, a second commit-‐ ment period under the Kyoto Protocol was agreed upon in 2012, but only a minor number of industri-‐ alized countries committed to these binding 2020 targets -‐ the EU, and some smaller countries (Doha Amendment, 2012). Later agreements under the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancún Agreements in-‐ cluded a more comprehensive set of countries, but the aggregate pledges will not provide sufficient emission reductions to limit global warming to below 2˚C. The 2014 UNEP Gap report reiterated that the gap between pledges and pathways consistent with 2˚C is not being closed and remains at a high 14-‐17 GtCO2-‐eq for 2030 only (UNEP, 2014). While the process of INDC submissions showed that most countries are to some extent willing to con-‐ tribute to climate change mitigation, it was not possible yet to include a top-‐down assessment of coun-‐ try contributions. The level of ambition of contributions as well as the establishment of an assessment and review process (“ratcheting of emission reductions”) will remain to be in the center of negotia-‐ tions at the Paris Conference. Against this background, our report offers deliberations on what a “fair share” for emissions in 2025 and 2030 could be. It shows, for a selection of ten countries, how their respective INDCs perform if related to different fair share approaches and effort sharing models. These assessments also take into account national mitigation potential and costs and the wider context of socio-‐economic devel-‐ opment of the countries. Finally, current policies and politics of each country are included in the assessments. Our report falls into three parts: •
The ten country chapters, with a qualitative analysis of each INDC
•
An Annex containing a detailed analysis and data for each country;
•
Annexes laying out the elements of the methodology developed by the research team.
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Mitigation Commitments and Fair Effort Sharing in a New Comprehensive Climate Agreement Starting 2020
2. Scope and method of the analysis Even if there is a general consensus that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions need to be reduced, so far no agreement exists on how a “fair share” of emission reductions should be determined in line with com-‐ mon but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities. In the absence of an agreed methodology to compare and assess countries´ mitigation efforts, different approaches have been developed to com-‐ pare countries’ contributions to climate change mitigation, often including an assessment of the coun-‐ tries’ targets against a fair share. The two areas of difference between each of the approaches are (i) focus on certain dimensions of the effort sharing e.g. historic responsibility, equality, capability or equal costs, and (ii) assumptions and initial judgments on how to weigh and treat certain aspects – e.g. which indicators to use for a quanti-‐ tative illustration of the dimensions or global emissions pathways required for specific temperature levels. Thus, the methodologies complement each other, offering answers from different angles – pro-‐ vided, the assumptions and judgments are transparent to the user. The result is a broad range of pos-‐ sible interpretations of what a fair share could be. This report picks four possible approaches to set appropriate levels of mitigation ambition for each country and evaluates countries' proposed mitigation contributions on this basis. The selected ap-‐ proaches distribute a given global emission trajectory to countries using quantitative indicators such as emissions, income and/or population. These indicators represent certain equity principles and al-‐ low to determine countries’ emission allocation (Vieweg, Sterk, Hare, Hagemann, & Fekete, 2014). The team used the Evolutions of Commitment (EVOC) Model for this analysis. The approaches chosen here cover a broad range of different positions regarding what is considered fair: § § § §
Converging Per capita Emissions (CPE): Focus on equality, with converging per capita emissions for all countries. Greenhouse Gas Development Rights (GDRs): Focus on responsibility, capability and needs. Common but Differentiated Convergence (CDC): Focus on converging per capita emissions after reaching a threshold. Triptych: Focus on exploiting different sectoral potentials depending on country grouping, also considering differentiation via timing.
A more detailed description of the approaches is provided in Annex 2. To complement the calculations of different effort sharing approaches, the report also analyses mitiga-‐ tion potential and costs for the selected countries. In particular, it provides domestic emission reduc-‐ tion potentials at different carbon prices. Additionally, for some countries the marginal mitigation costs associated with the results of the effort sharing calculations are presented. This provides further guidance on the potential of a country to reach the targets prescribed by the effort sharing approaches. The calculations are conducted using the Climate Strategies Tool (ClimStrat), developed by Fraunhofer ISI. A detailed description of the model is available in Annex 4. The results of the calculations based on the effort sharing approaches shed light on the countries’ re-‐ sponsibility and capability for greenhouse gas mitigation as well as their economic potential for emis-‐ sion reductions. In the current situation, most potentials should be used in order to get on a 2°C path-‐ way as fast as possible. This means that even potentials in countries with low responsibility and capa-‐ bility need to be considered. The analysis shows, which countries could use support for tapping into more ambitious parts of their mitigation potential. It also reveals which countries have responsibility or capability that goes beyond their domestic mitigation potential – those countries could thus support others to make up for this difference. The results of the effort sharing and mitigation cost calculations for each country are presented in a graphical format as illustrated below. The graph includes two modeled reference curves against which possible reductions are plotted: The black curve represents the reference scenario from the EVOC
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Mitigation Commitments and Fair Effort Sharing in a New Comprehensive Climate Agreement Starting 2020
model while the grey curve represents the ClimStrat reference. In addition, the figure shows which reduction levels could be achieved by the respective country at four levels of mitigation costs accord-‐ ing to the ClimStrat model: Costs below 13€ per tonne CO2-‐eq., costs between 13 and 33 €/t, costs between 33 and 67 €/t and costs between 67 and 100 €/t1. As noted above, these costs are calculated on the basis of purely domestic efforts. Finally, the figure displays emission targets that each country should take on according to the four effort sharing proposals considered in this study. Figure 1: Exemplary Illustration of Effort Sharing and Potential Calculations
GHG emissions [MtCO2e/a]
Reductions at
