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A minimum price for emission allowances offers the best opportunity for the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) to function as a key policy instrument in reducing CO2 emissions. Such a price floor will create a steady and higher CO2 price, which will stimulate corporations to reduce their CO2 emission and invest in low-carbon technologies. When the price of CO2 is too low, it is often more efficient for companies to buy emission rights rather than to invest in emission reduction.

Sub-Saharan Africa faces several challenges that hamper the effort to provide universal electricity access. The challenges are not the result of lack of energy resources but rather the result of governance and institutional problems as well as lack of capital to meet the high investment requirement. This study aims to provide relevant policy recommendations to facilitate the path towards universal electricity access in Sub-Saharan Africa. We do this by identifying the barriers for electricity access and the relevant actors, institutions, and regulations using desk research, stakeholder interviews and expert workshops. The results show that the absence of overall plans and approaches and lack of clarity in policies are the main challenges for the sector. Setting standards for electricity products, such as solar panels, could help to reduce the problem of counterfeit poor quality products. A broader participation of non-governmental actors is needed to increase the speed of electrification. This requires innovative revenue schemes, financial and fiscal incentives and elimination of market distortions. More generally, we conclude that stable and consistent policy frameworks and improved coordination between actors, are crucial to accelerate electrification in the region.

In the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), for the first time, non-state actors were addressed in the international negotiations and were explicitly invited to act on climate change. Indeed, there are many transnational emission reduction initiatives (TERIs) outside the UNFCCC, driven by non-state actors or national governments, which aim at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Using an Integrated Assessment Model (IAM), this study assessed the potential impact of a selection of large TERIs that existed before the Paris Agreement on global greenhouse gas emissions. TERIs could lead to significant emission reductions: the eleven selected initiatives included in the analysis here could – if fully implemented – deliver annual GHG emission reductions of 2.5 GtCO2eq by 2020 and of 5.0 GtCO2eq by 2030 from a no-policy-baseline emission level of 53.7 GtCO2 and 61.1 GtCO2eq, respectively. Although these reductions are of similar magnitude as those pledged by countries under the umbrella of the UNFCCC, these reductions may significantly overlap with those of pledges and Nationally Determined Contributions. The maximum estimate of overlap is around 70% by 2020 and 80% by 2030. This means that the combined impact on global GHG emissions of TERIs and NDCs, assuming a maximum overlap, would lead to emission levels between 53 and 55 GtCO2eq by 2030, compared to a level of 54 to 56 GtCO2eq resulting from NDCs alone.

By 15 December 2015, 187 countries had submitted their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) summarising their climate actions after 2020 in the context of the Paris Agreement. We used a unified framework to assess the mitigation components of INDCs covering 105 countries (representing approximately 91 % of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2012) with a special focus on the G20 economies. We estimated the required reduction effort by comparing the greenhouse gas emission targets implied by the INDCs with the projected levels resulting from current mitigation policies. The resulting projected global reduction effort amounts to approximately 4–6 GtCO2eq by 2030, of which the G20 economies are responsible for the largest share, in particular Brazil, China, the EU, and the United States. Despite these reductions, the global and G20 emission level is still projected to be higher in 2030 than it was in 2010. We compared the ambition levels of individual INDCs by analysing various indicators. Our analysis shows, for instance, that INDCs imply that greenhouse gas emissions of Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Korea peak before 2025, and of China, India and South Africa by 2030 or later.

This article quantifies the net aggregate impact in 2030 of commitments by individual non-state and subnational actors (e.g. regions, cities and businesses, collectively referred to as 'NSAs') to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The analysis was conducted for NSAs operating within ten major emitting economies that together accounted for roughly two-thirds of global GHG emissions in 2016. Our assessment includes 79 regions (e.g. subnational states and provinces), approximately 6,000 cities, and nearly 1,600 companies with a net emissions coverage of 8.1 GtCO2e/year, or a quarter of the ten economies' total GHG emissions in 2016. The analysis reflects a proposed methodology to aggregate commitments from different subnational (i.e. regional and city government) and non-state (i.e. business) actors, accounting for overlaps. If individual commitments by NSAs in the ten high-emitting economies studied are fully implemented and do not change the pace of action elsewhere, projected GHG emissions in 2030 for the ten economies would be 1.2–2.0 GtCO2e/year or 3.8%–5.5% lower compared to scenario projections for current national policies (31.6–36.8 GtCO2e/year). On a country level, we find that the full implementation of these individual commitments alone could result in the European Union and Japan overachieving their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), while India could further overachieve its unconditional NDC target. In the United States, where the national government has rolled back climate policies, NSAs could become a potential driving force for climate action.

This study assesses Japan's mid-century low-emission pathways using both national and global integrated assessment models in the common mitigation scenario framework, based on the carbon budgets corresponding to the global 2 °C goal. We examine high and low budgets, equal to global cumulative 1600 and 1000 Gt-CO2 (2011–2100) for global models, and 36 and 31 Gt-CO2 (2011–2050) in Japan for national models, based on the cost-effectiveness allocation performed by the global models. The impacts of near-term policy assumption, including the implementation and enhancement of the 2030 target of the nationally determined contribution (NDC), are also considered. Our estimates show that the low budget scenarios require a 75% reduction of CO2 emissions by 2050 below the 2010 level, which is nearly the same as Japan's governmental 2050 goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80%. With regard to near-term actions, Japan's 2030 target included in the NDC is on track to meet the high budget scenario, whereas it is falling short for the low budget scenario, which would require emission reductions immediately after 2020. Whereas models differ in the type of energy source on which they foresee Japan basing its decarbonization process (e.g., nuclear- or variable renewable energy-dependent), the large-scale deployment of low-carbon energy (nuclear, renewable, and carbon capture and storage) is shared across most models in both the high and low budget scenarios. By 2050, low-carbon energy represents 44–54% of primary energy and 86–97% of electricity supply in the high and low budget scenarios, respectively. © 2019, The Author(s).

Cost-effective achievement of the Paris Agreement's long-term goals requires the unanimous phase-out of coal power generation by mid-century. However, continued investments in coal power plants will make this transition difficult. India is one of the major countries with significant under construction and planned increase in coal power capacity. To ascertain the likelihood and consequences of the continued expansion of coal power for India's future mitigation options, we use harmonised scenario results from national and global models along with projections from various government reports. Both these approaches estimate that coal capacity is expected to increase until 2030, along with rapid developments in wind and solar power. However, coal capacity stranding of the order of 133–237 GW needs to occur after 2030 if India were to pursue an ambitious climate policy in line with a well-below 2 °C target. Earlier policy strengthening starting after 2020 can reduce stranded assets (14–159 GW) but brings with it political economy and renewable expansion challenges. We conclude that a policy limiting coal plants to those under construction combined with higher solar targets could be politically feasible, prevent significant stranded capacity, and allow higher mitigation ambition in the future.

This article quantifies the aggregate potential of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in 2030 from the assumed full implementation of major international cooperative initiatives (ICIs). To this end, a methodology is proposed to aggregate emission reduction goals of the most significant and potentially impactful global initiatives. We identified the extent to which reductions are additional to national policies, assuming these actions do not displace climate actions elsewhere, and accounted for overlap ranges between the ICIs. The analysis was conducted for 17 initiatives, selected from an original list of over 300 with a series of testing criteria, across eight sectors and ten major emitting economies. These initiatives include cities, regions, businesses, and other subnational and non-state actors, cooperating with each other and sometimes working in partnership with national governments or other international organizations. Our analysis shows that the combined achievement of initiatives' reduction goals could reduce global emissions in 2030 by 18–21 GtCO 2e/year in addition to current national policies (total of 60–63 GtCO 2e/year), down to 39–44 GtCO 2e/year. If delivered fully, reductions from these 17 initiatives would help move the global emissions trajectory within the range of a 2°C-consistent emission pathway by 2030, although a significant gap would remain to reduce emissions to a 1.5°C-consistent pathway. Key policy insights We propose a transparent and robust methodology to aggregate GHG mitigation potential of ICIs, accounting for overlaps between ICIs. If major initiatives meet their goals and do not change the course of other existing climate actions, they could make large contributions by 2030 towards global efforts to stay within the range of a below 2°C-consistent emission pathway by 2030. The full suite of existing initiatives beyond those in this analysis could further increase ambition towards achieving the Paris Agreement's temperature goals. Cities and regions, businesses and ...