Argentina

Historical emissions in all sectors excluding LULUCF for the period 1990–2018 as well as LULUCF emissions for 1990–2018 were taken from the national GHG inventory submitted as part of Argentina’s Fourth Biennial Update Report submitted in March 2022 to the UNFCCC (Government of Argentina, 2022c). These were extended until 2021 using growth rates from PRIMAP v2.4.2 Final (Gütschow & Pflüger, 2023).

Emissions in 2022 were estimated using the following methods:

• For the energy sector, emissions were estimated using BP’s 2021-2022 growth rate of energy emissions applied to the 2021 value (BP, 2023).
• For industry and agriculture, emissions were estimated using real annual GDP change applied to 2021 values (IMF, 2023).
• For the waste sector, emissions were estimated by extrapolating the trend of the last 5 years.

NDC absolute emissions levels including LULUCF are provided directly in the NDC for the unconditional target (Government of Argentina, 2021). To obtain the NDC emissions level excluding LULUCF, the CAT uses a Business-As-Usual scenario for the LULUCF sector developed by UNICEN (Keesler et al., 2019). This scenario shows that under current policies, LULUCF emissions in Argentina will steadily decrease until 2030, becoming a small net sink. For this reason, Argentina’s NDC target excluding LULUCF is slightly higher than its original target.

We also recalculate the target, that is originally communicated as an absolute number calculated using SAR GWP, to AR4 GWP. To do so, we calculate the difference in emissions between the last inventory year (2018) and the target year (2030) in SAR and apply the growth rate to the last historical value in AR4.

The CAT uses the projections developed by Gabriel Blanco and Daniela Keesler (UNICEN), in the report “Transición energética en la Argentina: Construyendo alternativas”(Blanco & Keesler, 2022) to develop our current policy projections. This study provides projections for all sectors based on current sectoral plans and actions in place, including the exploitation of non-conventional fossil fuels as of 2022.

The UNICEN business-as-usual (BAU) scenario has the following assumptions:

• Accounts for the penetration of renewable energy in the power sector following the current trend
• Adjusts the emissions curve of the power sector to capture the current development of nuclear energy
• Accounts for barriers in the implementation of energy efficiency measures presented in the sectoral plans (buildings, industry, and transport)
• Takes into account the significant development plan for the exploration and exploitation of fossil fuels (fracking and off-shore oil and gas production)
• The document does not mention the carbon tax

We apply the growth rates from UNICEN 2022 BAU scenario for the energy, industry, and waste sectors to the 2022 historical data points for those sectors. To get projections for the agriculture sector, we subtract LULUCF from the AFOLU sector projections. We then apply this growth rate to the 2022 historical data points for agriculture.

Argentina has committed to being GHG neutral by 2050. We include Argentina in our Optimistic scenario as part of our 2100 temperature warming estimate; however, we do not quantify a separate long-term emissions target for Argentina but rather include them in a conservative global estimate. We are unable to provide an accurate estimate of what Argentina’s GHG neutrality by 2050 target will mean for the country’s emissions. This is because Argentina fails to provide key information related to residual emissions, such as emissions projections to 2050, assumptions about the role of LULUCF in achieving GHG neutrality, and the potential use of international carbon credits.

The conservative global estimate assumes that the country achieves net zero by 2080 with a linear progression from the country’s NDC target in 2030 to 2080 (if the country’s NDC target is higher than the current policy projection, the linear progression follows from the current policy projection in 2030).

The CAT uses Global Warming Potential (GWP) values from the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) for all its figures and time series. Assessments completed prior to December 2018 (COP24) used GWP values from the Second Assessment Report (SAR).