rlacombe/ClimateX huggingface dataset:
There is a large range in the forecasts of urban land expansion across scenarios and models, which highlights an opportunity to shape future urban development towards low- or net-zero GHG emissions and minimise the loss of carbon stocks and sequestration in the agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector due to urban land conversion (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
New and emerging cities will have significant infrastructure development needs to achieve high quality of life, which can be met through energy- efficient infrastructures and services, and people-centred urban design (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Urbanisation: A megatrend driving global climate risk and potential for low-carbon and resilient futures Severe weather events, exacerbated by anthropogenic emissions, are already having devastating impacts on people who live in urban areas, on the infrastructure that supports these communities, as well as people living in distant places (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Urban settlements contribute to climate change, generating about 70% of global CO 2-eq emissions (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
As urbanisation unfolds, its legacy continues to be the locking-in of emissions and vulnerabilities (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Enabling action Innovative governance and finance solutions are required to manage complex and interconnected risks across essential key infrastructures, networks, and services, as well as to meet basic human needs in urban areas (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Increasing the pace of investments will put pressure on governance capability, transparency, and accountability of decision-making (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Third, the urban share of regional GHG emissions increased between 2000 and 2015, with much inter-region variation in the magnitude of the increase (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Fourth, the global average per capita urban GHG emissions increased between 2000 and 2015, with cities in the Developed Countries region producing nearly seven times more per capita than the lowest emitting region (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Future urban expansion will amplify the background warming caused by GHG emissions, with extreme warming most pronounced during night-time (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: very high)
Over 30 years, wood-based construction can accumulate between 0.25 and 20 GtCO 2 and reduce cumulative emissions from 4 GtCO 2 (range of 7–20 GtCO 2) to 2 GtCO 2 (range of 0.3–10 GtCO 2) (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
This might suggest that in other geographies, similar adjacent non-urban forest types may store similar carbon stocks per unit area (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
The involvement of governance at multiple levels is necessary to enable cities to plan and implement emissions reductions targets (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Further, regional, national, and international climate goals are most impactful when local governments are involved alongside higher levels, rendering urban areas key foci of climate governance more broadly (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
To meet the multi-trillion-dollar annual investment needs in urban areas, cities in partnership with international institutions, national governments, and local stakeholders increasingly play a pivotal role in mobilising global climate finance resources for a range of low-carbon infrastructure projects and related urban land use and spatial planning programmes across key sectors (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Moreover, the potential application of blockchain for land-based funding instruments is possibly associated with urban form attributes, such as density, compactness, and land-use mixture, to disincentivise urban expansion and emissions growth around city-fringe locations (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Transport- related emissions in developing regions of the world have increased more rapidly than in Europe or North America, a trend that is likely to continue in coming decades (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Appropriate infrastructure, including protected pedestrian and bike pathways, can also support much greater localised active travel.1 Transport demand management incentives are expected to be necessary to support these systemic changes (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The continued growth of electromobility for land transport would require investments in electric charging and related grid infrastructure (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Electromobility powered by low-carbon electricity has the potential to rapidly reduce transport GHG and can be applied with multiple co-benefits in the developing world’s growing cities (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Initial deployments of battery electric, hydrogen- and bio-based haulage are underway, and commercial operations of some of these technologies are considered feasible by 2030 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Increased efficiency has been insufficient to limit the emissions from shipping and aviation, and natural gas-based fuels are likely inadequate to meet stringent decarbonisation goals for these segments (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The production of synthetic fuels using low-carbon hydrogen with CO2 captured through direct air capture (DAC) or bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) could provide jet and marine fuels but these options still require demonstration at scale (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: low)
While many global scenarios place greater reliance on emissions reduction in sectors other than transport, a quarter of the 1.5°C degree scenarios describe transport-related CO2 emissions reductions in excess of 68% (relative to modelled 2020 levels) (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
In general terms, electrification tends to play the key role in land- based transport, but biofuels and hydrogen (and derivatives) could play a role in decarbonisation of freight in some contexts (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Biofuels and hydrogen (and derivatives) are likely more prominent in shipping and aviation (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The shifts towards these alternative fuels must occur alongside shifts towards clean technologies in other sectors (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Given the high degree of potential recyclability of LIBs, a nearly closed-loop system in the future could mitigate concerns about critical mineral issues (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Key to maximising benefits and managing trade-offs are sectoral integration, transparent governance, and stakeholder involvement (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
A sustainable bioeconomy relying on biomass resources will need to be supported by technology innovation and international cooperation and governance of global trade to disincentivise environmental and social externalities (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
This is about, or below half, the most recent (2019) emissions value of 59 ± 6.6 GtCO 2-eq (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Compared to other CDR methods, the primary barrier to upscaling DAC is its high cost and large energy requirement (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Costs: As the process captures dilute CO 2 (~0.04%) from the ambient air, it is less efficient and more costly than conventional carbon capture applied to power plants and industrial installations (with a CO 2 concentration of ~10%) (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Risks and impacts: DACCS requires a considerable amount of energy (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The SRCCL concluded that conversion of land for A/R and bioenergy crops at the scale commonly found in pathways limiting warming to 1.5°C or 2°C is associated with multiple feasibility and sustainability constraints, including land carbon losses (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Increased technology innovation, stakeholder integration and transparent governance structures and procedures at local to global scales are key to successful bioeconomy deployment maximising benefits and managing trade-offs (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Limited global land and biomass resources accompanied by growing demands for food, feed, fibre, and fuels, together with prospects for a paradigm shift towards phasing out fossil fuels, set the frame for potentially fierce competition for land3 and biomass to meet burgeoning demands, even as climate change increasingly limits natural resource potentials (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
In summary, there is significant scope for optimising use of land resources to produce more biomass while reducing adverse effects (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Context-specific prioritisation, technology innovation in bio-based production, integrative policies, coordinated institutions and improved governance mechanisms to enhance synergies and minimise trade-offs can mitigate the pressure on managed as well as natural and semi-natural ecosystems (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Yet, energy conservation and efficiency measures, and deployment of technologies and systems that do not rely on carbon-based energy and materials, are essential for mitigating biomass demand growth as countries pursue ambitious climate goals (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
It also built national capacity for greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting, catalysed the creation of GHG markets, and increased investments in low-carbon technologies (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Other international agreements and institutions have led to avoided carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions from land use practices, as well as avoided emissions of some non- CO2 greenhouse gases (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
By contrast, the commitments under the Paris Agreement are primarily procedural, extend to all Parties, and are designed to trigger domestic policies and measures, enhance transparency, stimulate climate investments, particularly in developing countries, and to lead iteratively to rising levels of ambition across all countries (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Issues of equity remain of central importance in the UN climate regime, notwithstanding shifts in the operationalisation of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ from Kyoto to Paris (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The recent proliferation of national mid-century net zero GHG targets can be attributed in part to the Paris Agreement (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Moreover, its processes and commitments will enhance countries’ abilities to achieve their stated level of ambition, particularly among developing countries (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Arguments against the Paris Agreement are that it lacks a mechanism to review the adequacy of individual Parties’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), that collectively current NDCs are inconsistent in their level of ambition with achieving the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal, that its processes will not lead to sufficiently rising levels of ambition in the NDCs, and that NDCs will not be achieved because the targets, policies and measures they contain are not legally binding at the international level (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
To some extent, arguments on both sides are aligned with different analytic frameworks, including assumptions about the main barriers to mitigation that international cooperation can help overcome (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Agreements addressing ozone depletion, transboundary air pollution, and release of mercury are all leading to reductions in the emissions of specific greenhouse gases (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Climate change is being addressed in a growing number of international agreements operating at sectoral levels, as well as within the practices of many multilateral organisations and institutions (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Sub-global and regional cooperation, often described as climate clubs, can play an important role in accelerating mitigation, including the potential for reducing mitigation costs through linking national carbon markets, although actual examples of these remain limited (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Many developing countries’ NDCs have components or additional actions that are conditional on receiving assistance with respect to finance, technology development and transfer, and capacity building, greater than what has been provided to date (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
In some cases, notably with respect to aviation and shipping, sectoral agreements have adopted climate mitigation goals that fall far short of what would be required to achieve the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
International cooperation is emerging but so far fails to fully address transboundary issues associated with Solar Radiation Modification and CO 2 removal (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Cooling caused by SRM would increase the global land and ocean CO 2 sinks (medium confidence), but this would not stop CO 2 from increasing in the atmosphere or affect the resulting ocean acidification under continued anthropogenic emissions (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
A gradual phase-out of SRM combined with emissions reduction and CDR could avoid these termination effects (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Fundamental inequities in access to finance as well as its 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)
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 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
There is a climate financing gap which reflects a persistent misallocation of global capital (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
This reflects policy misalignment, the current perceived risk-return profile of fossil fuel-related investments, and political economy constraints (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 3 to 6 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
The gaps are wide for all sectors and represent a major challenge for developing countries,3 especially Least-Developed Countries (LDCs), where flows have to increase by factor 4 to 7, for specific sectors like agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) in relative terms, and for specific groups with limited access to, and high costs of, climate finance (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Financing needs for the creation and strengthening of regulatory environment and institutional capacity, upstream financing 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)
In addition to indirect and direct subsidies, the public sector’s role in addressing market failures, barriers, provision of information, and risk sharing (equity, various forms of public guarantees) 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)
The following policy options can have important long-term catalytic benefits (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The AR5 concluded that published assessments of financial flows whose expected effect was to reduce net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and/or to enhance resilience to climate change aggregated USD343–385 billion4 yr–1 globally between 2010 and 2012 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
The resulting estimated gaps in annual mitigation financing during 2014 to 2017, using reporting of climate financing from published sources, was about 67% for 2015, and 76% for the energy sector alone in 2017 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
The gap is expected to be aggravated by COVID-19 (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Four major events and macro trends mark the developments in climate finance in the previous five years and likely developments in the near term.• First, the 2015 Paris Agreement, with the engagement of the financial sector institutions in the climate agenda, has been followed by a series of related developments in financial regulation in relation to climate change and in particular to the disclosure of climate-related financial risk (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
At the same time, while it is still too early to draw positive conclusions, this crisis highlights opportunities in terms of political and policy feasibility and behavioural change in respect of realigning climate finance (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
As each warmer year keeps producing more negative impacts – arising from greater and rising variability and intensity of rainfall, floods, droughts, forest fires and storms – the negative consequences have become more macro- economically significant, and worst for the most climate-vulnerable developing countries (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The third headwind is rising financial and insurance sector risks and stresses (distinct from real ‘physical’ climate risks above) arising from the impacts of climate change, and systematically affecting both national and international financial institutions and raising their credit risks (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Climate finance in developing countries remains heavily concentrated in a few large economies (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Least-developed countries (LDCs), on the other hand, continue to represent less than 5% year-on-year (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Mitigation continues to represent the lion’s share of global climate finance (consistently above 90% between 2017 and 2020), and in particular renewable energy, followed by energy efficiency and transport (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
More generally, significant gaps remain to track climate finance comprehensively at a global level: • Available estimates are based on a good coverage of investments in renewable energy and, where available, energy efficiency and transport, while other sectors remain more difficult to track, such as industry, agriculture and land use (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Data on private and commercial finance remain very patchy, particularly for corporate financing (including debt financing provided by commercial banks), for which it is difficult to establish a link with activities and projects on the ground (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
To avoid locking GHG emissions incompatible with remaining carbon budgets, this implies a rapid scaling down of new fossil fuel- related investments, combined with a scaling up of financing to allow energy and infrastructure systems to transition (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Estimated mitigation financing needs as a percentage of mean 2017–2020 GDP in USD 2015 comes in at around 2–4% for developed countries, and around 4-9% for developing countries (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
This disparity is further exacerbated when considering adaptation, infrastructure and SDG-related investment needs (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Notably, climate finance flows to African countries might have even decreased for mitigation technology deployment (stagnated for adaptation between 2017 and 2020), widening the finance gap in African countries in the recent years (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Taking into account the inertia of the financial system as well as the magnitude of the challenge to align financial flows with the long-term global goals, fast action is required to ensure the readiness of the financial sector as an enabler of the transition (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
On the one hand, unmitigated climate change implies an increased potential for adverse socio-economic impacts especially in more exposed economic activities and areas (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
On the other hand, the mitigation of climate change, by means of a transition to a low- carbon economy, requires a transformation of the energy and production system at a pace and scale that implies adverse impacts on a range of economic activities, but also opportunities for some other activities (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Significant cost increases have been observed related to increases in frequency and magnitude of extreme events (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Fossil fuel reserve and resource estimates exceed in equivalent quantity of CO 2 with virtual certainty the carbon budget available to reach the 1.5°C and 2°C targets (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
One outstanding challenge for the analysis of investors’ exposure to climate risks is the difficulty of gathering granular and standardised information on the breakdown of non-financial firms’ revenues and CAPEX in terms of low-/high- carbon activities (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
One fundamental challenge is that climate-related financial risk is endogenous (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The endogeneity of risk and its associated deep uncertainty implies that the standard approach to financial risk, consisting of computing expected values and risk based on historical values of market prices, is not adequate for climate risk (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
This development is key to mainstreaming the assessment of transition risk among financial institutions, but the following challenges emerge (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Global macroeconomic changes that may affect asset prices are expected to take place as a result of a possible reduction in growth or contraction of fossil fuel demand, in scenarios in which climate targets are met according to carbon budgets, but also following ongoing energy efficiency changes (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Due to the predominantly international nature of fossil fuel markets, assets may be at risk from regulatory and technological changes both domestically and in foreign countries (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Framing climate risk as a financial risk (not just as an ethical issue) is key for it to become an actionable criterion for investment decision among mainstream investors (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
The role of government is crucial for creating an enabling environment for climate (Clark 2018), and governments are critical in the launching and maintenance of this circle of trust by lowering the political, regulatory, macroeconomic and business risks (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Transparency: Policy de-risking measures, such as robust policy design and better transparency, as well as financial de-risking measures, such as green bonds and guarantees, at both domestic and international levels, enhance the attractiveness of clean energy investments (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
However, risk disclosures alone would likely be insufficient as long as market failures that inhibit the emergence of low-carbon investment initiatives with positive risk-weighted returns (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
Central banks in all economies will likely have to play a critical role in supporting the financing of fiscal operations, particularly in a post-COVID-19 world (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: high)
A green QE programme ‘would have the benefit of providing large amounts of additional liquidity to companies interested’ in green projects (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Additional monetary policies and macroprudential financial regulation may facilitate the expected role of carbon pricing on boosting low-carbon investments (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)
Despite increasing challenges to the theory (Sewell 2011), especially by repeated episodes of global financial crashes and crises, and other widely noted anomalies, a weaker form of the efficient markets hypothesis may still apply (IPCC AR6_WGIII, confidence: medium)