Tag: NDC

Counting on … day 217

19th November 2024

Last week the UK announced its 2035 NDC* target –  to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions by at least 81% on 1990 levels. The previous 2035 target was for a 78% reduction. The UK has an interim target of cutting greenhouse gases by 68% by 2030.

Greenpeace UK’s senior political adviser, Rebecca Newsom, said in a statement. “But targets need to be backed up with bold action. When the government submits its action plan next year, it must include details of how the UK will deliver a full phase out of oil and gas.” Hopefully we can count on the government to curtail the development of the Rosebank oil field. The development of the oilfield is in the balance as judges on Scotland deliberate as to the legality of the original licensing process. 

  • nationally determined contribution – ie each nations’s undertaking to reduce national emissions so as to meet the targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement

Counting on … day 65

13th March 2024

To monitor progress – ie whether nations are meeting the targets they set for themselves with their NDCs – there is the work of an independent body, the Climate Action Tracker. 

“The Climate Action Tracker is an independent scientific project that tracks government climate action and measures it against the globally agreed Paris Agreement aim of “holding warming well below 2°C, and pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C.” A collaboration of two organisations, Climate Analytics and NewClimate Institute, the CAT has been providing this independent analysis to policymakers since 2009.” https://climateactiontracker.org/

In 2022 the UK updated its NDC, as part of the COP26 agreement,  to commit to reducing it economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by at least 68% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels. (https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/NDC/2022-06/UK Nationally Determined Contribution.pdf)

The diagram below shows Climate Action Trackers assessment for the UK as of of September 2023. There clearly room for improvement.

Counting on … day 64

12th March 2024

A Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) is a climate action plan that shows how a nation will cut its emissions and adapt to climate change. (Being nationally determined allows for differentiation between nations according to the current ability to effect change. Wealthier countries should be able to reduce emissions at a faster rate). 

Each Party – ie nation or state – to the Paris Agreement is required to establish an NDC.  Collectively these NDCs should ensure the world’s greenhouse gas emissions peak and then fall, and so address the climate crisis. Each NDC covers a five year period – being submitted to the UNFCC in 2020, 2025, 2030 etc – but is subject to ongoing review by each nation.

Since 2021 the UNFCC has produced a synthesis report that collects, collates and analyses all the NDCs, to determine whether or not nations are on track to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. The most recent, published in November 2023 in the run up to COP28, found that the  national climate action plans were still insufficient to limit the global temperature rise to just 1.5C. The hope was that this announcement would spur on the parties at COP28 to take radical action to address this shortcoming.

However it did not.