Paris Agreement climate proposals need a boost to keep warming well below 2 °C

The Paris climate agreement aims at holding global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and to “pursue efforts” to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To accomplish this, countries have submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) outlining their post-2020 climate action. Here we assess the effect of current INDCs on reducing aggregate greenhouse gas emissions, its implications for achieving the temperature objective of the Paris climate agreement, and potential options for overachievement. The INDCs collectively lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to where current policies stand, but still imply a median warming of 2.6–3.1 degrees Celsius by 2100. More can be achieved, because the agreement stipulates that targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are strengthened over time, both in ambition and scope. Substantial enhancement or over-delivery on current INDCs by additional national, sub-national and non-state actions is required to maintain a reasonable chance of meeting the target of keeping warming well below 2 degrees Celsius.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all involved in the UNEP Emissions Gap Report, in particular J. McGlade, J. Alcamo and B. Metz, the members of the steering committee, all its authors, and the secretariat at UNEP-DTU, in particular A. Olhoff and J. Christensen. We acknowledge and are grateful for the data contributions of, and discussion with, all the global and national modelling groups, in particular M. Rocha, B. Hare, M. Schaeffer (Climate Analytics, Germany, Climate Action Tracker), L. Jeffery (PIK, Germany, Climate Action Tracker), P. van Breevoort (Ecofys, The Netherlands, Climate Action Tracker), A. Admiraal, M. Roelfsema, H. van Soest (PBL, The Netherlands), N. Forsell (IIASA, Austria), L. Cozzi, F. Kesicke (IEA, France), J. Cranston Turner, R. Boyd (LSE, UK), S. Dockweiler (DEA, Denmark), L. Siegel, E. Sawin (Climate Interactive, USA), A. Kitous, K. Keramidas, G. Grassi (JRC, European Commission), G. Iyer (PNNL, USA), and the UNFCCC Secretariat. Without their contributions, this Perspective would have had a much more limited data basis. We thank S. Sterl (NewClimate Institute, Germany) and M. Roelfsema (PBL, The Netherlands) for assistance with data analysis, M. Strubegger (IIASA, Austria) for providing load factor estimates, V. Krey and O. Fricko (IIASA, Austria) for providing capture efficiencies for negative emissions technologies, and J. Cook for critical feedback on the manuscript and figures. We acknowledge and thank the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) for hosting and maintaining the IPCC AR5 Scenario Database. J.R., N.H. and K.R. received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 642147 (CD-LINKS). M.M. is the recipient of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship (grant number FT130100809).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ENE Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria Joeri Rogelj & Keywan Riahi
  2. Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Joeri Rogelj
  3. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Bilthoven, The Netherlands Michel den Elzen
  4. NewClimate Institute, Cologne, Germany Niklas Höhne & Hanna Fekete
  5. Environmental Systems Analysis Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands Niklas Höhne
  6. World Resources Institute, Washington DC, USA Taryn Fransen
  7. Energy Research Center, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa Harald Winkler
  8. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (COPPE/UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Roberto Schaeffer
  9. National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, Beijing, China Fu Sha
  10. Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria Keywan Riahi
  11. Australian-German Climate and Energy College, School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Malte Meinshausen
  12. PRIMAP Group, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Potsdam, Germany Malte Meinshausen
  1. Joeri Rogelj