Not on course for destination 2030

It’s no exaggeration to say that the next 10 years will be among the most consequential in human history. As the pandemic abates, governments must focus on tackling the climate challenge – and they will have to ramp up their ambitions rapidly. Jennifer Johnson reports.

Despite a wealth of newly declared targets and goals, governments are not yet approaching the level of ambition needed to limit global temperature rise to around 1.5°C. In the rush to jumpstart stalled economies, there’s a danger that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will rebound – and that reductions observed during the pandemic will be a fluke, rather than the start of a terminal decline. The United Nations has said that humanity must slash its GHG output by 45% by 2030 from 2010 levels, meaning that the need for deep decarbonisation across all sectors is urgent.

Slow to act

Stark as these warnings are, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that policymakers are not yet heeding them sufficiently. In February, the research group BloombergNEF (BNEF) revealed that the world’s largest economies are largely failing to stick to the promises they made under the Paris Agreement. The firm’s G20 Zero-Carbon Policy Scoreboard evaluated the decarbonisation policies of the world’s 19 largest economies plus the European Union, and found that even countries with progressive and far-reaching climate policies are falling short.

Analysts confirmed that much of the progress in reducing GHGs to date has come from the power sector, with all of the countries they studied having some government scheme to support the rollout of clean electricity. The countries covered in the Scoreboard were marked out of 100% based on 122 qualitative and quantitative metrics relating to the number, robustness and effectiveness of their decarbonisation policies.

According to the report, no country has a perfect score for all areas, with those for the industry and buildings sectors most commonly the lowest.

Governments will therefore need to consider how to best address these weaknesses if they wish to achieve their climate targets. ‘While some power sector policies have delivered results, most countries have done little elsewhere in the economy,’ says a statement from Victoria Cuming, Head of Global Policy Analysis for BNEF. ‘And even within each sector, it’s not enough to implement incentives for one technology – multiple pathways are required.’

The UN has called for the world’s largest emitters to step up their ambitions ahead of November’s COP26 meeting in Glasgow. Parties to the Paris Agreement were meant to have submitted enhanced nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – or climate action plans – to the UN by the end of last year. However, only 74 countries (including the 27 EU countries), representing 28% of global emissions, followed through by the deadline. Notably absent were three of the world’s largest emitters: the US, China and India.

Countdown to COP26

In late February, the UN also published its initial NDC Synthesis Report, which was designed to quantify the impact of countries’ increased climate ambitions. Analysis showed that the revised NDCs result in emissions cuts that are only 3% lower by 2030 than the previous round of pledges set out by the same nations in 2015.

However, Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change claimed that the report represented a ‘snapshot, not a full picture’ of the NDCs, as COVID-19 made it difficult for many governments to complete their submissions for 2020. An additional report will be released prior to COP26, according to Espinosa, who also urged countries to make their submissions as quickly as possible.

‘This report shows that current levels of climate ambition are very far from putting us on a pathway that will meet our Paris Agreement goals,’ she says in a statement. ‘While we acknowledge the recent political shift in momentum towards stronger climate action throughout the world, decisions to accelerate and broaden climate action everywhere must be taken now.’

Only two of the 18 largest global emitters – the EU and the UK – presented an NDC last year that contained a strong expansion of their GHG reduction targets. Though the Synthesis Report showed that the plans submitted in 2020 are more robust and detailed than their predecessors, the UN conceded that the overall level of ambition on the part of major emitters remains ‘very low’.

Espinosa further urged the G20 nations to lead the way by ensuring their COVID-19 recovery measures are sustainable and promote low-carbon development. On this front, data has also shown that policymakers have left much to be desired.

Recovery or rebound

New analysis of announced recovery spending by major economies – undertaken by Oxford’s Economic Recovery Project and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) – found that only 18% can truly be considered ‘green’. Analysts classified just $341bn of the $14.6tn in post- COVID pledges as sustainable, though the inclusion of European Commission spending brings the figure up to $697bn. The largest share of this total ($86bn) is directed toward green transport mechanisms, such as electric vehicle subsidies and cycling infrastructure.

Meanwhile, $66bn was invested in low carbon energy, largely thanks to Spanish and German subsidies for renewable energy projects, as well as hydrogen and infrastructure investments. Some $56bn was announced for natural capital or ‘nature based solutions,’ including ecosystem regeneration initiatives and reforestation. The report emphasises that low-income countries will require substantial concessional finance from international partners to keep decades of progress against poverty from being undone.

Brian O’Callaghan, Lead Researcher at the Oxford University Economic Recovery Project and the report’s author, says: ‘Despite positive steps towards a sustainable COVID-19 recovery from a few leading nations, the world has so far fallen short of matching aspirations to build back better. But opportunities to spend wisely on recovery are not yet over. Governments can use this moment to secure long-term economic, social, and environmental prosperity.’

The United States was found to have the smallest recovery package of any advanced economy as a proportion of its total GDP – largely due to decisions taken while Donald Trump was in office. However, around a quarter of this spending can be classified as green. Rival economy China is notably pursuing a recovery powered largely by fossil fuels, with significant investments in steel and cement and an expansion in coal mining.

In addition, the US, Canada, Mexico, and Australia made investments supporting oil and gas in their own spending packages. It’s worth noting that only wealthy countries and the richest developing economies could devote large sums of public money to post-COVID stimulus measures. This is because many developing countries are not able to borrow on favourable terms, only further underscoring the importance of radical emissions cuts from the G20.

With less than a year to go until COP26, the pressure has never been greater on governments to commit to addressing the climate challenge. While some advanced economies can boast about their low-carbon electricity investments, there remains much work to be done across other sectors. The dream of ‘building back better’ after coronavirus is fading – but the goal of keeping temperature rise to 2°C or under must not be allowed to.