WORLD ENERGY TRANSITIONS OUTLOOK
Annex B ackground note – Quantification of climate action plans The data used for the quantification of climate action plans are retrieved from national plans submitted by countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In the event that the data are found to be sparse or insufficient, they are supplemented with data from the PRIMAP database, which combines several published datasets to create a comprehensive set of greenhouse gas emission pathways for each country. All Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and long-term strategies or net zero targets communicated by parties as of November 12, 2021, are included in the COP26 announcements scenario. The COP26 announcements scenario is based on an “optimistic” climate analysis that assesses the lowest emission level of the full NDC implementation, i.e. including both conditional and unconditional contributions. The dataset collected from “Climate Resource” was chosen because of its quality, transparency and comprehensiveness. It has been produced from an extensive quantification of NDCs, as well as the most recent long-term strategies and announced climate pledges. Where countries do not communicate whole-economy targets, the reference level emissions are assumed for that sector. In that case, the reference level emissions changes are sourced from the SSP5 reference, downscaled to a country-by-country emission level. For each submitted NDC, future emissions levels are quantified for 2025, 2030 and 2050. In cases where countries submit only for 2025 or beyond 2030, linear interpolations and extrapolations are applied to derive the 2030 emission level. It is assumed that NDC target levels that are higher than high reference scenarios (i.e. scenarios without additional climate or energy policies to reduce emissions) are not going to be reached, but “overachieved”. For countries where this is the case (like Turkey or Pakistan), it is assumed that the country-downscaled and high-emission growth SSP5 reference scenarios, normalised with recent historical emissions, portray the maximum amount of emissions. For countries without longer-term targets, the SSP1 reference growth rates for the period 2030-2050 are assumed based on a quantile rolling window approach by Lamboll et al. (Lamboll et al., 2020). The IRENA WETO Planned Energy Scenario (PES) considers national plans and policies prior to the NDC updates for COP26. In this regard, the difference between the PES curve and the COP26 announcements curve is due to countries’ increased climate ambition in the run-up to COP26. The area difference between the plotted WETO 1.5°C Scenario and the COP26 announcements scenario represents the additional effort required to meet WETO’s 1.5°C target. To stay within the 1.5°C target, emissions in 2030 would need to be around 22.2 GtCO 2 , down from 37.5 GtCO 2 under the COP26 announcement scenario.
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