Australia

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Critically Insufficient4°C+ World

NDCs with this rating fall well outside of a country’s “fair share” range and are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would exceed 4°C.

Highly insufficient< 4°C World

NDCs with this rating fall outside of a country’s “fair share” range and are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would reach between 3°C and 4°C.

Insufficient< 3°C World

NDCs with this rating are in the least stringent part of a country’s “fair share” range and not consistent with holding warming below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would reach over 2°C and up to 3°C.

2°C Compatible< 2°C World

NDCs with this rating are consistent with the 2009 Copenhagen 2°C goal and therefore fall within a country’s “fair share” range, but are not fully consistent with the Paris Agreement long term temperature goal. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming could be held below, but not well below, 2°C and still be too high to be consistent with the Paris Agreement 1.5°C limit.

1.5°C Paris Agreement Compatible< 1.5°C World

This rating indicates that a government’s NDCs in the most stringent part of its “fair share” range: it is consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit.

Role model<< 1.5°C World

This rating indicates that a government’s NDC is more ambitious than what is considered a “fair” contribution: it is more than consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit.

Global Warming Potentials

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

Historical emissions

Historical emissions data were obtained from the 2018 CFR data to 2016 and harmonized with the historical data in the government’s 2018 projection report to 2018 (Australian Department of the Environment, 2018; Government of Australia, 2018).

Pledge

For the 2030, we have estimated levels of emissions excl. LULUCF resulting from the NDC by subtracting projected emissions for the LULUCF sector in 2030 from the targeted level incl. LULUCF.

For a detailed description on the assumptions used regarding base year emissions, emissions data sources, LULUCF accounting rules used to calculate the Kyoto targets and 2020 pledge, please consult our Australia report.

Current policy projections

The current policy projection is based on the Australia’s December emissions projections 2018 report (Australian Department of the Environment, 2018). The CAT always provides current policy projections excluding LULUCF. To this end, we subtracted the projections provided for LULUCF.