The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
An eagerly awaited aircraft CO2 emissions standard made further and important headway today at the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The new environmental measure was unanimously recommended by the 170 international experts on ICAO’s Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP), paving the way for its ultimate adoption by the …
Countries, including members of the G20, should strengthen the credibility of their pledges to limit or reduce annual emissions of greenhouse gases in order to build confidence in the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to a new report published by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the …
Indonesia has a key role to play in meeting climate stabilization targets, with its high contribution to global land use, forestry, peatland, and agriculture emissions. The Indonesian government has set emissions reduction targets of 26% below business as usual by 2020, scaling up to 29% by 2030, and increasing their …
The European Commission has published the first European Aviation Environmental Report, the result of close collaboration between the EC, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), the European Environment Agency (EEA) and EUROCONTROL. The main objective is to provide a regular overview of the environmental performances of the sector in order …
Global temperature targets, such as the widely accepted limit of an increase above pre-industrial temperatures of two degrees Celsius, may fail to communicate the urgency of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The translation of CO2 emissions into regional- and impact-related climate targets could be more powerful because such targets are …
Following the historic international deal agreed at the UN climate conference, COP21, and the news from Davos that climate change is the world’s most impactful risk, major companies such as Dell, Unilever and Walmart are establishing the extent to which impending climate regulation will impact their business. However, half their …
As long as global CO2 emissions continue to increase annually, long-term committed Earth system changes grow much faster than current observations. A novel metric linking this future growth to policy decisions today is the mitigation delay sensitivity (MDS), but MDS estimates for Earth system variables other than peak temperature (ΔT …
UNEP DTU Partnership has released the report Uncertainty in Greenhouse-gas Emission Scenario Projections, which outlines approaches to quantify the uncertainty associated with national-level projections of greenhouse-gas emissions, by describing practical applications of those approaches in Mexico and South Africa. The report aims to promote uncertainty quantification, because quantifying uncertainty has …
A new study estimates that $2.2 billion in benefits came from reduced greenhouse gas emissions and $5.2 billion from reductions in other air pollution for state renewable portfolio standard (RPS) policies operating in 2013. The report also shows national water withdrawals and consumption were reduced by 830 billion gallons and …
The United States will need new legislation to achieve its long-term target of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by more than 80 percent by 2050. In this issue brief, show how a national carbon price—in the form of either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program—can help the United States …
Low emissions development strategies (LEDS) are national economic and social development plans that promote sustainable development while reducing GHG emissions. While LEDS programs have helped to mainstream economy-wide planning for low emissions, planning for low emissions agriculture has remained nascent. Low-emissions development (LED) in agriculture acknowledges that the primary purpose …
Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) explores how jurisdictions in Indonesia, focusing on Kalimantan provinces, could become Zero Deforestation Zones (ZDZs). ZDZs are jurisdictions (provinces or districts) that have strong, mutually reinforcing public and private governance structures in place and are on a path to reaching zero net emissions from deforestation while …
This compendium on implementing energy efficiency in buildings studies the challenges in the implementation of building energy codes; policy regulation and its impact and international best practices. In India, the building industry – commercial and residential - accounts for almost 34 percent of the country’s total energy consumption, making it …
When the gavel came down for the final time at the climate summit in Paris on 12 December, representatives from 195 countries erupted into cheers. They had approved a landmark plan to combat climate change after two weeks of gruelling negotiations. The agreement commits most countries to reduce their greenhouse-gas …
The report Analysing the status quo of CDM projects concludes that under current market conditions, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is currently not able to provide sufficient incentive for the continuation of mitigation activities and identifies a general risk of mitigation activities to discontinue. Due to their substantial mitigation potential …
The much-awaited Paris Agreement on climate change was adopted by all members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on Saturday. The Agreement will now be open for ratification by each member nation from April 2016 onwards Paris agreement has come after an intense two weeks of …
The much-awaited Paris Agreement on climate change was adopted by all members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on Saturday. The Agreement will now be open for ratification by each member nation from April 2016 onwards
The Climate Change Performance Index is an instrument supposed to enhance transparency in international climate politics. Its aim is to encourage political and social pressure on those countries which have, up to now, failed to take ambitious actions on climate protection as well as to highlight countries with best-practice climate …
To have a >50% chance of limiting warming below 2 °C, most recent scenarios from integrated assessment models (IAMs) require large-scale deployment of negative emissions technologies (NETs). These are technologies that result in the net removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. We quantify potential global impacts of the different …
Initial analysis of almost 6,000 projects targeting renewable energy and energy efficiency in developing countries has revealed that the projects could reduce CO2 emissions by about 1.7 gigatons a year by 2020. The findings, released at COP21 in Paris by the 1 Gigaton Coalition in its first annual report, entitled …
