Understanding the origin of Paris Agreement emission uncertainties
Open accessAbstract
The UN Paris Agreement puts in place a legally binding mechanism to increase mitigation action over time. Countries put forward pledges called nationally determined contributions (NDC) whose impact is assessed in global stocktaking exercises. Subsequently, actions can then be strengthened in light of the Paris climate objective: limiting global mean temperature increase to well below 2 °C and pursuing efforts to limit it further to 1.5 °C. However, pledged actions are currently described ambiguously and this complicates the global stocktaking exercise. Here, we systematically explore possible interpretations of NDC assumptions, and show that this results in estimated emissions for 2030 ranging from 47 to 63 GtCO 2 e yr−1. We show that this uncertainty has critical implications for the feasibility and cost to limit warming well below 2 °C and further to 1.5 °C. Countries are currently working towards clarifying the modalities of future NDCs. We identify salient avenues to reduce the overall uncertainty by about 10 percentage points through simple, technical clarifications regarding energy accounting rules. Remaining uncertainties depend to a large extent on politically valid choices about how NDCs are expressed, and therefore raise the importance of a thorough and robust process that keeps track of where emissions are heading over time.
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The range of outcomes across integrated assessment models is a result of differences in historical emissions, different assumptions about socio-economic growth rates, different impact of policy implementation in models, and real uncertainty from structural model differences.
“This range is a result of the differences in historical emissions21, different assumptions about socio-economic growth rates, different impact of policy implementation in models, and finally real uncertainty as a result of structural model differences (see Methods).”
From Taking stock of national climate policies to evaluate implementation of the Paris Agreement (2020) · cites this paper as [21]
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Rogelj, J., Fricko, O., Meinshausen, M., Krey, V., Zilliacus, J. J. J., & Riahi, K.
- Affiliations
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (AT)
- The University of Melbourne (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Rogelj, Joeri
- Venue
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2017-06-06
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 15748-15748
- ISSN
- 2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5467211
- OpenAlex
- W2623140243
- Cited by
- 130
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 5
- FWCI
- 25.55
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Nature Communications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Minerva Access (University of Melbourne) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- IIASA PURE (International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Spiral (Imperial College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- ETH Zürich Research Collection (cc-by)
- Funders
- European Commission (HORIZON2020, 642147)
- Australian Research Council (FT130100809)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
- Keywords
- Paris Agreement, Nationally Determined Contributions, emission uncertainty, 1.5°C target, 2°C target, greenhouse gas emissions
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