Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are a cornerstone of the Paris Agreement on climate change. They set out the actions that countries plan to undertake to achieve the agreement’s objectives, focused on limiting the rise in average global temperatures to well below 2°C, ideally to 1.5 °C.
Renewable energy features prominently in most of these NDCs, confirming that the transition to a renewable energy future has come to be recognised globally as central to addressing climate change. Governments are well underway with implementing the first set of NDCs and will begin to review them in 2018. This entails taking stock of the adequacy of those NDCs to meet the objectives set out in the historic 2015 climate agreement. NDCs will be revised or updated by 2020, and every five years thereafter – with each revision aimed at being more ambitious than the previous one.
As a contribution to this process, in this report, Untapped Potential for Climate Action: Renewable energy in Nationally Determined Contributions, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has undertaken an analysis of current NDCs. These were compared with national renewable energy targets, plans, programmes and policies, as well as with current trends in renewable energy deployment. IRENA’s analysis suggests that while renewable energy targets and policies are indeed critical components of NDCs, there is substantial scope for countries to increase their renewable energy ambitions. This is true not only for the purposes of mitigation, but also to build resilience in the face of growing climate change impacts.