Since the Paris Climate Conference in 2015, the world has developed a model of country progress towards emission reduction targets set at COP21. Unlike similar efforts, this model tracks not only progress towards nationally determined contributions (NDCs), but also the system-wide relationship of these reductions to energy markets, investment flows, and employment.
As the five-year anniversary of the COP21 in Paris is approaching, the system that the world lives in is showing serious cracks. The global coronavirus pandemic may be exposing these cracks most vividly at the moment, but the system-wide instability linked to global climate change, environmental stress, and social inequities was showing significant strain before 2020. The value of systems analysis is increasingly evident.
This paper provides one model for thinking about some of the challenges ahead in the 2020s. It discusses how we can understand the linkages between carbon emissions, energy markets, investment, and employment in terms of past performance and the future opportunities to reshape them. It also presents recent outputs related to 11 countries studied in detail, including:
- What progress has each country realised between 2015 and 2018 and what are the levels of future ambition required to reach 2030 NDCs?
- What improvements has each country made in the emissions intensity of their economy between 2015 and 2018 and how must these efforts evolve considering future GDP growth in the 2020s to reach 2030 NDCs?
- What are the unique challenges and opportunities in each country in the 2020s and what are the policy and market interventions that can further progress?