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The European Commission has made a proposal that specifies its “intended nationally determined contribution” (INDC) to the new international agreement on climate change. The proposal is to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% below 1990 in 2030. However, it now also includes forestry accounting, which could effectively weaken the reductions necessary by all others sectors by a few percentage points. The original proposal of domestic reductions of 40% is already less ambitious than the range of what studies find to be the EU’s fair contribution to the global effort to limit...

One of the most fundamental questions of a future international agreement on climate change will be on which countries will contribute how much to the global effort to combat climate change. With the first round of discussions under the Ad-hoc Durban Platform in 2015 in Geneva in early February, Parties have heralded the next critical phase of the negotiations leading towards a new global climate agreement which is to cover numerous elements such as mitigation, adaptation, finance, loss & damage and others. Guided by the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective...

Briefing, 11 February 2015 Niklas Höhne (NewClimate Institute), Michel den Elzen (PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency), Annemiek Admiraal (PBL) This briefing provides an overview on the feasibility and implications of phasing out net global greenhouse gas emissions. It was prepared in the framework of the ACT 2015 project. Download the briefing as PDF What is meant with “net phase out of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions”? Net phase out of GHG emissions means that anthropogenic emissions [1] of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere decrease to a level equal to or smaller than...

The latest update to the Climate Action Tracker has been released, showing that the current level of global climate change mitigation ambition reduces the projected warming trajectory to +2.9° C - 3.1° C. It is the first time since 2009 that the Climate Action Tracker has calculated a discernibly lower temperature increase than previously estimated, due to proposed post-2020 actions. The latest update shows the effect of recently announced pledges to be a warming increase of 2.9° C - 3.1° C, whilst projections from current policies remain significantly above this. The chart shows that the...

NewClimate Institute supported a training on Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) in the Maldives organised by GIZ. The training gave the participants an understanding of the concept of NAMAs in the international and the domestic context. It highlighted specific aspects to be considered for the development of NAMAs, for example, financing and MRV. During the three-day workshop, the participants developed various NAMA ideas in the energy, waste, transport and fishery sectors, with the support of Hanna Fekete from NewClimate Institute and GIZ trainers. Maldives is a Small Island...

Within the Climate Action Tracker project, NewClimate Institute, Climate Analytics, PIK and Ecofys prepared an initial assessment of the recent announcements by the United States and China’s new pledges and proposals on emissions reductions for 2025 and 2030, in the context of the present international negotiations for a new climate agreement to be adopted at the end of 2015. The announcement of increased ambition by the biggest emitters China and the United States one year ahead of the Paris Climate Summit in 2015 is a very important political development. It begins to close the gap between...

In preparation of the new international climate agreement to be adopted in Paris in 2015, all countries are asked to put offers on the table on how and how much they are willing to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions after 2020, so called “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs). In order to achieve an ambitious and equitable agreement, INDCs of countries with similar circumstances will have to be judged by others to be equally ambitious. Illustrating that this is the case will be fundamental to the success of the new climate agreement, because countries will want to be sure...