Argentina
Page last updated: 9th May 2017
Rating
Assessment
Since 2015, when President Mauricio Macri was sworn into office, Argentina has shown positive developments in the climate arena by adopting policies like the ‘Biofuels Law’ and the new ‘Renewable Energy Law,’ ratifying the Paris Agreement in September 2016, and presenting a revised and more ambitious NDC at COP22 in November 2016.
Nevertheless, President Macri will need to take more action as, under current policies, emissions from all sectors (excluding LULUCF) are still projected to grow significantly - by about 50% above 2010 levels by 2030. The CAT rates Argentina’s unconditional NDC target as ‘Inadequate’; if Argentina were to increase its ambition by turning its conditional target into an unconditional one, it would move close to the CAT’s “medium” rating.
In November 2016, Argentina submitted its revised Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), including an unconditional absolute emissions reduction target limiting emissions to 483 MtCO2e by 2030, including land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) emissions (405 MtCO2e excl. LULUCF). This is equivalent to a 22% increase compared to 2010 levels or 74% above 1990 levels, excluding LULUCF. Argentina has also put forward a conditional target to limit emissions to 369 MtCO2e by 2030 including LULUCF (310 MtCO2e excl. LULUCF), which equals to a reduction of 7% compared to 2010 levels or an increase of 22% compared to 1990, levels excluding LULUCF).
We rate Argentina’s NDC target “inadequate”, based on the unconditional target. The “inadequate” rating indicates that Argentina’s commitment is not in line with interpretations of a “fair” approach in line with holding warming below2°C, let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If Argentina were to drop the conditions for the conditional target, it would move close to the CAT’s “medium” rating. However, the “medium” rating still indicates that the country’s climate plans are at the least ambitious end of what would be a fair contribution. This would not yet be consistent with limiting warming to below 2°C, let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit, unless other countries make much deeper reductions and comparably greater effort.
Pledges and targets
Paris Agreement targets
On November 2016, Argentina presented its revised NDC. It includes two absolute emissions reduction targets for 2030 (Government of Argentina, 2016a).
The unconditional target limits emissions to 483 MtCO2e by 2030 including LULUCF and, according to our calculations, to 405 MtCO2e excluding LULUCF by 2030. This unconditional target is equivalent to 22% above 2010 levels and 74% above 1990 levels excluding LULUCF.
The conditional target, including LULUCF, limits emissions to 369 MtCO2e by 2030 and, according to our calculations, to 310 MtCO2e excluding LULUCF by 2030. This is equivalent to 7% reduction below 2010 levels and 22% above 1990 levels, excluding LULUCF.
During the presentation of the revised NDC at COP22, the Minister of Environment and his team presented a comprehensive set of mitigation actions, in all emissions sectors that were taken into account when revising the NDC. The minister also emphasised the government’s willingness to take action on climate change, especially in comparison to recent years where Argentina’s participation in the international negotiations was limited. (Ministry of Environment of Argentina, 2016).
The revision process included two steps, and, led to a very small increase in mitigation ambition (about 1%), compared to the previous NDC target. This came as a result of revising the baseline scenario and the mitigation actions included in it when developed for the first NDC of the country. In a second step, the methodology for quantifying historical emissions was updated to the IPCC 2006 guidelines, causing a reduction of about 19% of emissions from Agriculture and LULUCF in 2012 (compared to when using 1996 guidelines). This caused the baseline scenario to move down and, given that initially the target was set as a reduction relative to BAU, so did the emissions reduction target. Finally, Argentina decided to change the type of target and report its national contribution as an absolute emissions reduction by 2030, to reduce uncertainties related to the baseline and to take their commitment to action “one step forward” (Ministry of Environment of Argentina, 2016).
CAT ratings are based on emissions excluding the LULUCF sector. To obtain the NDC emissions level excluding LULUCF, the CAT assumes that the share of the LULUCF emissions in 2030 will be similar to the share in the NDC’s BAU scenario. This scenario was recently updated, and now projects that LULUCF emissions will reduce from current levels at a slower rate than previously assumed (3rd National Communication). The revision of the BAU LULUCF emissions projection is a laudable attempt by the government to accurately reflect “reality” as highlighted during the presentation of the revised NDC at COP22 (Ministry of Environment of Argentina, 2016).
Copenhagen Pledge
Argentina submitted a list of unilateral and supported mitigation actions currently being undertaken across the sectors energy efficiency, renewable energy, biofuels, forest management and waste management. According to the submission “these initiatives have a direct and positive consequence in the emission reduction of GHG, contributing to the ultimate objective of the Convention” (Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2010).
Fair share
Argentina’s “inadequate” rating indicates that the country’s commitment is not in line with interpretations of a “fair” approach in line with holding warming below2°C, let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. This means that if most other countries followed Argentina’sapproach, global warming would exceed 3–4°C. The reduction target could therefore be strengthened further to reflect the Argentina’s high capability. If Argentina decided to increase its ambition by turning its conditional target into an unconditional one, the country would move close to the “medium” rating under the CAT assessment. This would mean that Argentina’s climate plans are within the effort sharing range of the country but at the least ambitious end of what would be a fair contribution, remaining still inconsistent with limiting warming to below 2°C, let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit, unless other countries make much deeper reductions and comparably greater effort.
Current policy projections
Under the new government of President Mauricio Macri, new policies have been introduced, including a renewable energy law and a biofuels law (Government of Argentina, 2015b & Government of Argentina, 2016b). These policies are projected to contribute to emissions reductions of around 18–19 MtCO2e in 2030. Under current policies, emissions from all sectors (excluding LULUCF) are still projected to grow significantly, by 50% above 2010 levels by 2030. Energy-related emissions are projected to increase about 60% from 2010 - 2030, and the agriculture and cattle-ranching sector emissions to rise about 30% in the same period (Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2015).
An important development in the energy sector is the new ‘Renewable Energy Law’ published at the end of 2015, which aims to increase the share of renewables (including hydro smaller than 50 MW) in total power generation to 20% by 2025 (Government of Argentina, 2015b). Another important development is in the transport sector, where Law 27.132 aims to promote shifts in transport mode towards rail (Government of Argentina, 2015a), and there have also been efforts to improve mode shift and congestion in Buenos Aires with the Ciudad Verde programme (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2014). Further, a new ‘Biofuels Law’ was adopted in March 2016, requiring a minimum 12% of bioethanol blend in transport fuels from 2016.
For the agriculture and cattle-ranching sector, planned policies include crop rotation, improvements in technology, efficiency of fertiliser use and increase in the slaughter weight and the weaning rate. Emissions from this sector are still projected to account for almost 30% of the total GHGs in 2030, with 12% coming directly from cattle. Considering the high level of methane emissions, combined with the associated deforestation this activity has caused, the agriculture sector offers great potential for Argentina to constrain its emissions (Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2015).
The LULUCF sector is reported as a source of emissions projected to decrease in the future (Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2015). Deforestation, especially in the Andean Patagonian Forest region, increased significantly between 2000-2010 with the main drivers of this forest clearing being logging, the expansion of agriculture (soy, sugar cane, citrus crops, tea, yerba mate, tobacco) and extensive cattle-ranching. Measures specifically targeting the LULUCF sector are the Environmental Protection of the Native Forests and the National Fond for the Enrichment and Conservation of Native Forests as conservation measures to conserve, restore and promote the sustainable management of native forests (Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2015). Further, Argentina has worked on improving its LULUCF accounting methodology, leading to a change in the sectoral results compared to previous years reports (Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, 2015).
Based on our assessment, Argentina will have to implement additional mitigation actions and plans to meet its unconditional and conditional targets. In this sense, the Argentinian NDC represents additional ambition beyond what it’s doing today.
Assumptions
Historical emissions
Historical emissions for 1990–2012 were taken from the national GHG inventory of the 3rd National Communication (Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, 2015).
Pledge
NDC absolute emissions levels including LULUCF are provided directly in the NDC for the unconditional and conditional targets (Government of Argentina, 2016a). However, to distinguish LULUCF emissions from the total GHG emissions and calculate its ratings, the CAT assumes that the mitigation efforts will be proportional to the sector's relevance in terms of emissions contribution, thus maintaining the share of each sector's emissions similar across the years until 2030. This assumption is in line with the information provided by the Ministry of Environment on the expected shares of emissions of each sector in the present and until 2030 (Ministry of Environment of Argentina, 2016).
Current Policies
The CAT current policies scenario for Argentina was developed based on the country’s GHG inventory of the 3rd National Communication (Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, 2015), which uses 2012 as base year. In addition to the policies covered in the aforementioned scenario, the GHG mitigation impacts of the ‘Biofuels Law’ and the new ‘Renewable Energy Law’ were quantified and added to the mitigation potential reported in the current policies scenario of the National Inventory. These policies were published simultaneously or after the 3rd National Communication, therefore, their mitigation impact is unlikely to have been included in the current policies projections they report.
The ‘Biofuels Law’ was adopted in March 2016 and requires a minimum 12% of biofuels blend in transport fuels starting in 2016. To quantify its impact, we compared the current share of ethanol and biodiesel - as reported by the IEA (2016) - and its associated emissions under a BAU scenario, to a fixed share of 12% blend and its corresponding emissions expected under the “biofuels law”.
The new ‘Renewable Energy Law,’ published end of 2015, aims to increase the share of renewables (including hydro smaller than 50 MW) in total power generation to 20% by 2025. One issue that arose in quantifying the impact of Renewable Energy Law no. 27191 is the need to differentiate between small (>50MW) and large hydro. For this, we based our calculation on the latest available data on the total generation capacity of the country, as reported by the Ministry of Energy (Ministry of Energy of Argentina, 2016)which estimates small hydro’s contribution to be around 2% of the total hydro capacity in the country.
The abatement potential of these two policies is estimated to be around 18-19 MtCO2e by 2030.
Sources
