Huge Gap between Climate Commitments and Policy, Including Transport

A report from Climate Transparency shows gaps in climate policy aspirations and actual policies being implemented, including for transport.  The G20 met this past week in China, and Paris Agreement and overall climate policy featured on the agenda. Countries could not agree to a key measure to set an actual date to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels, something a report from Climate Transparency report critiqued.

Startling though is the huge gap shown in the chart below between Paris Agreement 1.5°C climate commitments made by countries last December, including (and especially) the G20, real-world GHGs, which continue to increase, and the measure that need to be taken to even attempt to meet those commitments, according to Climate Transparency.

The Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) include measures such as increasing renewable energy and decarbonizing transport by increasing biofuels usage and deploying electrification. INDCs are essentially countries’ plans for how to achieve Paris Agreement climate targets. And, as I have written about before, look at the huge gap for the years 2020, 2025 and 2030. The G20, together, needs to reduce emissions in 2030 by a further 85% – six times the efforts they have pledged so far.

The report shows a scorecard for the G20 on various factors such as carbon, energy and electricity intensity, climate policy, emissions and effectiveness of the INDCs that have been submitted. No country scored high, except for Brazil, which was rated “good” across the board except for its climate policy and INDCs as the following figure shows.

Other highlights from the report include the following:

• Of all the G20 member states, Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. stand out the highest per capita energy-related CO2 emissions.
• For the G20, the use of renewable energy has increased by 18% since 2008, but several are far too reliant on coal. Even if only a small fraction of the planned coal plants were built, it would become virtually impossible to keep temperature increase below the 2°C limit, or down to 1.5˚C, according to the report.
• Investment attractiveness is rated relatively high in China, France, Germany, India, the UK and the United States. International climate finance is modest compared to GDP. Fossil fuel subsidies are substantially higher than their contribution to international climate finance.
• Policy frameworks received mixed reviews, as the figure below shows. Most countries have building efficiency and renewable energy measures in place, followed by fuel economy standards for cars. Emissions trading schemes, and especially carbon taxes, were not as common a feature of countries’ climate policy.

The upshot is that G20 countries are generally working toward fulfilling Paris Agreement climate commitments, but the challenge is enormous. Shell CEO Ben van Beurden said as much at a conference recently, cautioning attendees not to expect quick fixes and that “this century’s landscape will inevitably be a patchwork of renewables and hydrocarbons.”