Wendel Trio

With climate impacts happening all around, governments are expected to increase action to limit greenhouse gas emissions and subsequent temperature rise. The longer we delay transformative action, the more substantial and challenging the necessary greenhouse gas emission cuts will need to be. This also applies to the EU. This paper aims to look at the implications of current EU policies and targets on the EU’s carbon budget, the processes to set or update the EU’s 2030, 2035 and 2040 targets, and highlights the need for much more ambition in target setting if the EU is to make a fair share to the global efforts to limit dangerous climate change.

AirClim’s Northern Forests and Climate Change project aims to increase the visibility of Northern forests in the international climate debate.

At the last G20 Leaders’ Summit, which took place on 9–10 September 2023 in New Delhi, India, the leaders of the world’s biggest economies agreed to pursue tripling renewable energy capacity globally.

The agreed global goal is to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Now countries must act to make this happen. This briefing explains the scientific and political process which led to countries committing explicitly to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Instrumental to these decisions was a process called: the Periodic Review of the long-term global goal under the Convention and of overall progress towards achieving it (PR2). The briefing also gives an overview how the Kyoto Protocol was implemented and which greenhouse gas reductions were achieved.

Short briefing which calculates, based on methodology developed by the London School of Economics, what the costs of action and inaction would be for several EU scenarios. The briefing finds that current policies would lead to a GDP loss of 7.11%/year by 2100, while implementing the Fit for 55 proposals would lead to an annual loss of 2.58%. Opting for a real 1.5°C compatible pathway on the other hand would lead to an increase of GDP of 0.84%. The benefits of increasing ambition are thus also important in economic terms. In particular for future generations as they will foot the bill of our inaction.

Defining 1.5°C compatible CO2 targets and climate finance responsibilities for a range of European countries This briefing aims to contribute to the discussion on the potential application of carbon budgets in the policy debate by identifying both emission reduction targets and climate finance responsibilities for 42 European countries based on a 1.5°C compatible global carbon budget.

This briefing highlights why the EU needs to reduce its emissions well beyond 55% in order to contribute its fair share to the global effort to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C as envisaged by the Paris Agreement.

In the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, countries engaged “to limit temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”, as going beyond that threshold would bring dangerous and irreversible impacts. Multiple assessments have made it clear that we are currently not on track to achieve this objective and are heading towards a 2.5°C temperature rise. Two important EU instruments to do this are currently being revised: The Emissions Trading System (ETS) governing emission reductions in the power and industry sectors by limiting emissions from around 10,000 major emitting installations; The Effort Sharing Regulation (ESR) which sets targets for each Member State to limit emissions not covered by the ETS (mainly in the agriculture, buildings, road transport and waste sectors). This paper looks at possible scenarios to bring the ETS and ESR in line with 1.5°C compatible carbon budgets.

Since the IPCC’s first publication of global carbon budget estimates, huge scientific progress has been made to tackle the uncertainties in the use of this concept. The latest numbers as contained in the WG I contribution to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report are now much more robust. This briefing calculates the EU’s carbon budget under currently agreed targets and compares this to the remaining global carbon budget.

In the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to make an effort to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C as going beyond that temperature limit would bring severe negative impacts, in particular for those most vulnerable. While not explicit in the text, it is generally understood that the objective is to ensure temperature rise is limited to 1.5°C by 2100. As substantial climate action has been delayed over and over again, almost all 1.5°C consistent scientific pathways for the future foresee peak temperatures potentially going beyond 1.5°C during the course of the century, with temperatures being reduced to 1.5°C or below by 2100. This concept of average temperature rise going temporarily beyond 1.5°C and then being reduced is referred to as temperature overshoot. This briefing explains and discusses this concept and the risks.

There are multiple arguments for why the EU'S 2030 climate target aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% is not compatible with the 1.5°C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement. The EU thus will need to look at how it can do more. Substantial additional action in all economic sectors and in all EU Member States is needed and possible. Even while substantial reductions - well beyond the 2020 target - have been achieved in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), also the sectors covered by this legislation can do much more. This can be facilitated by a number of improvements of the ETS Directive, including through rebasing emission levels to actual levels of emissions and by increasing the annual linear reduction factor.