rlacombe/ClimateX huggingface dataset:
The extent to which countries increase the ambition of their NDCs and ensure they are effectively implemented will depend in part on the successful implementation of the support mechanisms in the Paris Agreement, and in turn will determine whether the goals of the Paris Agreement are met (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Transnational partnerships and alliances involving non-state and sub-national actors are also playing a growing role in stimulating low-carbon technology diffusion and emissions reductions (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Moreover, there are cases where international cooperation may be hindering mitigation efforts, namely evidence that trade and investment agreements, as well as agreements within the energy sector, impede national mitigation efforts (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Complementarity in policies helps in the design of an optimal demand-side policy mix (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Fundamental inequities in access to finance as well as finance terms and conditions, and countries’ exposure to physical impacts of climate change overall, result in a worsening outlook for a global Just Transition (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Other major challenges for commercial climate finance include: the mismatch between capital and investment needs, home bias31 considerations, differences in risk perceptions for regions, as well as limited institutional capacity to ensure safeguards are effective (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
This increased awareness can support climate policy development and implementation (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
This leaves high uncertainty, both near term (2021–30) and longer term (2021– 50), on the feasibility of an alignment of financial flows with the Paris Agreement goals (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
When the perceived risks are too high, the misallocation of abundant savings persists and investors refrain from investing in infrastructure and industry in search of safer financial assets, even earning low or negative real returns (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
To meet the needs for rapid deployment of mitigation options, global mitigation investments are expected to need to increase by the factor of three to six (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The gaps represent a major challenge for developing countries, especially Least-Developed Countries (LDCs), where flows have to increase by the factor of four to seven for specific sectors such as AFOLU, and for specific groups with limited access to, and high costs of, climate finance (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Soft costs for regulatory environment and institutional capacity, upstream funding needs as well as R&D and venture capital for development of new technologies and business models are often overlooked despite their critical role to facilitate the deployment of scaled-up climate finance (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
This will particularly impact urban infrastructure and the energy and transport sectors (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
A common understanding of debt sustainability and debt transparency, including negative implications of deferred climate investments on future GDP, and how stranded assets and resources may be compensated, has not yet been developed (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
A significant push for international climate finance access for vulnerable and poor countries is particularly important given these countries’ high costs of financing, debt stress and the impacts of ongoing climate change (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Approaches include de-risking investments, robust ‘green’ labelling and disclosure schemes, in addition to a regulatory focus on transparency and reforming international monetary system financial sector regulations (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
These relatively new labelled financial products will help by allowing a smooth integration into existing asset allocation models (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Green bond markets and markets for sustainable finance products have also increased significantly since AR5, but challenges nevertheless remain, in particular, there are concerns about ‘greenwashing’ and the limited application of these markets to developing countries (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Greater public-private cooperation can also encourage the private sector to increase and broaden investments, within a context of safeguards and standards, and this can be integrated into national climate change policies and plans (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
It can also help address macroeconomic uncertainty and alleviate developing countries’ debt burden post-COVID-19 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
In addition to indirect and direct subsidies, the public sector’s role in addressing market failures, barriers, provision of information, and risk-sharing can encourage the efficient mobilisation of private sector finance (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Existing policy misalignments – for example, in fossil fuel subsidies – undermine the credibility of public commitments, reduce perceived transition risks and limit financial sector action (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
This highlights the importance of trust in political leadership which, in turn, affects risk perception and ultimately financing costs (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
A coordinated effort to green the post-pandemic recovery is also essential in countries facing much higher debt costs (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Technological innovation can also bring about new and improved ways of delivering services that are essential to human well-being (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Trade-offs include negative externalities’ – for instance, greater environmental pollution and social inequalities – rebound effects leading to lower net emission reductions or even increases in emissions, and increased dependency on foreign knowledge and providers (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
This systemic view of innovation takes into account the role of actors, institutions, and their interactions, and can inform how innovation systems that vary across technologies, sectors and countries, can be strengthened (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The effectiveness of such international cooperation arrangements, however, depends on the way they are developed and implemented (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
International diffusion of low-emission technologies is also facilitated by knowledge spillovers from regions engaged in clean R&D (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
The evidence on the role of intellectual property rights (IPR) in innovation is mixed. Some literature suggests that it is a barrier while other sources suggests that it is an enabler to the diffusion of climate-related technologies (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
These gaps could be filled by enhancing financial support for international technology cooperation, by strengthening cooperative approaches, and by helping build suitable capacity in developing countries across all technological innovation system functions (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
For example, despite building a large market for mitigation technologies in developing countries, the lack of a systemic perspective in the implementation of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), operational since the mid-2000s, has only led to some technology transfer, especially to larger developing countries, but limited capacity building and minimal technology development (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Addressing both sets of challenges simultaneously presents multiple and recurrent obstacles that systemic approaches to technological change could help resolve, provided they are well managed (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Obstacles include both entrenched power relations dominated by vested interests that control and benefit from existing technologies, and governance structures that continue to reproduce unsustainable patterns of production and consumption (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Inspiration can be drawn from the global unit-cost reductions of solar PV, which were accelerated by a combination of factors interacting in a mutually reinforcing way across a limited group of countries (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
At present, the understanding of both the direct and indirect impacts of digitalisation on energy use, carbon emissions and potential mitigation is limited (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Looking at climate change from a justice perspective also means placing the emphasis on: (i) the protection of vulnerable populations from the impacts of climate change, (ii) mitigating the effects of low-carbon transformations, and (iii) ensuring an equitable decarbonised world (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Understanding the co-benefits and trade-offs associated with mitigation is key to understanding how societies prioritise among the various sectoral policy options (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
There are synergies and trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation as well as synergies and trade-offs with sustainable development (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
There can be many synergies in urban areas between mitigation policies and the SDGs but capturing these depends on the overall planning of urban structures and on local integrated policies such as combining affordable housing and spatial planning with walkable urban areas, green electrification and clean renewable energy (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
The feasibility challenges associated with mitigation pathways are predominantly institutional and economic rather than technological and geophysical (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
A wide range of factors have been found to enable sustainability transitions, ranging from technological innovations to shifts in markets, and from policies and governance arrangements to shifts in belief systems and market forces (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Those same conditions that may serve to impede the transition (i.e., organisational structure, behaviour, technological lock-in) can also ‘flip’ to enable both the transition and the framing of sustainable development policies to create a stronger basis for policy support (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
For example, rebuilding more sustainably after an extreme event, or renewed public debate about the drivers of social and economic vulnerability to multiple stressors (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Climate change is the result of decades of unsustainable production and consumption patterns, as well as governance arrangements and political economic institutions that lock-in resource-intensive development patterns (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Strengthening different stakeholders’ ‘response capacities’ to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate will be critical for a sustainable transition (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
It found this would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Modelled direct mitigation costs of pathways to 1.5°C, with no/limited overshoot, span a wide range, but were typically three to four times higher than in pathways to 2°C (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Since 2010, GHG emissions have continued to grow, reaching 59 ± 6.6 GtCO 2-eq in 2019,1 but the average annual growth in the last decade (1.3%, 2010–2019) was lower than in the previous decade (2.1%, 2000–2009) (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Average annual GHG emissions were 56 ± 6.0 GtCO 2-eq yr –1 for the decade 2010–2019 growing by about 9.1 GtCO 2-eq yr –1 from the previous decade (2000–2009) – the highest decadal average on record (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The average annual emission levels of the last decade (2010–2019) were higher than in any previous decade for each group of GHGs (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
This growth outpaced the reduction in the use of energy per unit of GDP (–2% yr –1, globally) as well as improvements in the carbon intensity of energy (–0.3% yr –1) (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Emissions, however, have rebounded globally by the end of December 2020 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
For comparison, the remaining carbon budget for keeping warming to 1.5°C with a 67% (50%) probability is about 400 (500) ± 220 GtCO 2 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Average annual GHG emissions growth during 2010 to 2019 slowed compared to the previous decade in energy supply (from 2.3% to 1.0%) and industry (from 3.4% to 1.4%, direct emissions only), but remained roughly constant at about 2% per year in the transport sector (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Reductions in global carbon intensity by –0.2% yr –1 contributed further – reversing the trend during 2000 to 2009 (+0.2% yr –1) (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Increasing inequality within a country can exacerbate dilemmas of redistribution and social cohesion, and affect the willingness of rich and poor to accept lifestyle changes for mitigation and policies to protect the environment (medium evidence, medium agreement) {2.6.1, 2.6.2, Figure 2.25} Estimates of future CO 2 emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructures already exceed remaining cumulative net CO 2 emissions in pathways limiting warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
This compares to overall cumulative net CO 2 emissions until reaching net zero CO 2 of 510 (330–710) Gt in pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot, and 890 (640–1160) Gt in pathways that limit warming to 2°C (<67%) (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
While most future CO 2 emissions from existing and currently planned fossil fuel infrastructure are situated in the power sector, most remaining fossil fuel CO 2 emissions in pathways that limit warming to 2°C (<67%) and below are from non-electric energy – most importantly from the industry and transportation sectors (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Countries with a lower carbon pricing gap (higher carbon price) tend to be less carbon intensive (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
For methane, GWP100 implies a social discount rate of about 3–5% depending on the assumed damage function, whereas GWP20 implies a much higher discount rate, greater than 10% (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
These studies indicate that, for mitigation pathways that limit warming to 2°C (<67%) above pre-industrial levels or lower, using GWP100 to inform cost-effective abatement choices between gases would achieve such long-term temperature goals at close to least global cost within a few percent (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Using the dynamic GTP instead of GWP100 could reduce global mitigation costs by a few percent in theory (high confidence), but the ability to realise those cost savings depends on the temperature limit, policy foresight and flexibility in abatement choices as the weighting of SLCF emissions increases over time (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
The ability of these metrics to relate changes in emission rates of short-lived gases to cumulative CO 2 emissions makes them well-suited, in principle, to estimating the effect on the remaining carbon budget from more, or less, ambitious SLCF mitigation over multiple decades compared to a given reference scenario (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
A fundamental change in GHG emission metrics used to monitor achievement of existing emission targets could therefore inadvertently change their intended climate outcomes or ambition, unless existing emission targets are re-evaluated at the same time (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: very high)
GHG emissions levels in 2019 were higher compared to 10 and 30 years earlier (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
GHG emissions growth slowed compared to the previous decade (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The CO 2-FFI share in total CO 2-eq emissions has plateaued at about 65% in recent years and its growth has slowed considerably since AR5 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Starting in the spring of 2020 a major break in global emissions trends was observed due to lockdown policies implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Daily emissions, estimated based on activity and power-generation data, declined substantially compared to 2019 during periods of economic lockdown, particularly in April 2020 – as shown in Figure 2.6 – but rebounded by the end of 2020 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Cumulative CO 2 emissions since 1850 reached 2400 ± 240 GtCO 2 in 2019 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Emissions in the last decade are about the same size as the remaining carbon budget of 400 ± 220 (500, 650) GtCO 2 for limiting global warming to 1.5°C and between one-third and half the 1150 ± 220 (1350, 1700) GtCO 2 for limiting global warming below 2°C with a 67% (50%, 33%) probability, respectively (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
GHG and CO 2-FFI levels diverge starkly between countries and regions (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Residential buildings accounted for the majority of this sector’s emissions (64%, 6.3 GtCO 2-eq, including both direct and indirect emissions), followed by non-residential buildings (35%, 3.5 GtCO 2-eq) (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Road transport passenger and freight emissions represented by far the largest component and source of this growth (6.1 GtCO 2-eq, 69% of all transport emissions in 2019) (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
North America’s absolute and per capita transport emissions are the highest amongst world regions, but those of South, South-East and East Asia are growing the fastest (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Technological change has had a mitigating effect on emissions over the long term and is central to efforts to achieving climate goals (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Progress since AR5 shows that multiple low-carbon technologies are improving and falling in cost (high confidence); technology adoption is reaching substantial shares, and small-scale technologies are particularly promising on both (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
However, the historical pace of technological change is still insufficient to catalyse a complete and timely transition to a low-carbon energy system: technological change needs to accelerate (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Reasons that these exemplars could be applied more broadly in the future include: growing urgency on climate change, shifting motivation from price response to proactive resource scarcity, and an increase in the likelihood of technological breakthroughs (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Technological change has been at the core of transitions, but is best understood as part of a system in which social aspects are crucial (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
The observed pace of these changes and the likelihood of their continuation support the arguments in the previous section that future energy transitions are likely to occur more quickly than in the past (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Among the most notable are solar PV, wind power, and batteries (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The future potential for PV and batteries seems especially promising given that neither industry has yet begun to adopt alternative materials with attractive properties as the cost reductions and performance improvements associated with the current generation of each technology continue (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Solar PV is by far the most dynamic technology, and its cost since AR5 has continued on its steep decline at about the same rate of change as before AR5, but now costs are well within the range of fossil fuels (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Smaller unit sizes, sometimes referred to as ‘granularity’, tend to be associated with faster learning rates (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
The large residual has motivated studies, which find that small-scale technologies provide opportunities for rapid change, but they do not make rapid change inevitable; a supportive context, including supportive policy and complementary technologies, can stimulate more favourable technology outcomes (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
There is also evidence that small technologies not only learn but become adopted faster than large technologies (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Cost reductions facilitate adoption, which generates opportunities for further cost reductions through a process of learning by doing (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
In contrast, IAMs indicate that they expect much lower rates of growth in future years for the technologies that have been growing fastest in recent years (wind and solar), without strong evidence for why this should occur.The overall pattern shows that IAMs expect growth in small-scale renewables to fall to less than half of their recent pace, and large- scale CCS to more than double from the limited deployment assessed (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Hence, cumulative net CO 2 emissions to limit warming to 2°C (<67%) or lower could already be exhausted by current and planned fossil fuel infrastructure (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Therefore, our overall assessment of these available lines of evidence strongly emphasises the importance of decommissioning, reduced utilisation of existing power sector infrastructure, as well as continued cancellation of new power sector infrastructures in order to limit warming to well below 2°C (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Despite such evidence, studies of carbon pricing find that additional policies are often needed to stimulate sufficient emissions reductions in transportation (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Public transit can reduce vehicle travel and lower GHG emissions by reducing the number of trips taken by private vehicles and the length of those trips (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Bike- and car-sharing programmes can reduce GHG emissions (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Final energy demand in the absence of any new climate policies is projected to grow to around 480–750 EJ yr–1 in 2050 (compared to around 390 EJ in 2015) (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
The likelihood of limiting warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot has dropped in AR6 compared to the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR1.5) because global GHG emissions have risen since the time SR1.5 was published, leading to higher near-term emissions (2030) and higher cumulative CO 2 emissions until the time of net zero (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Pathways limiting warming to 2°C (>67%) reach 50% reductions in the 2040s and net zero CO 2 by 2070s (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Only 30% of the pathways limiting warming to 2°C (>67%) or lower reach net zero GHG emissions in the 21st century (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
In those pathways reaching net zero GHGs, it is achieved around 10 to 40 years later than for net zero CO 2 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Reaching and sustaining global net zero GHG emissions, measured in terms of GWP-100, results in a gradual decline of temperature (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
In pathways limiting warming to 2°C (>67%), projected CO 2 emissions are reduced between 2019 and 2050 by around 49% for energy demand, 97% for energy supply, and 136% for AFOLU (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
In cost-effective mitigation pathways, the energy-supply sector typically reaches net zero CO 2 before the economy as a whole, while the demand sectors reach net zero CO 2 later, if ever (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The use of bioenergy can lead to either increased or reduced emissions, depending on the scale of deployment, conversion technology, fuel displaced, and how/ where the biomass is produced (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
CDR through some measures in AFOLU can be maintained for decades but not in the very long term because these sinks will ultimately saturate (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Yet, these estimates do not account for the economic benefits of avoided climate change impacts (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
This holds true even without accounting for benefits in other sustainable development dimensions or non- market damages from climate change (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)