Bhutan

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 from the Second National Communication (Royal Government of Bhutan, 2011) are available for 1994, 2000 and 2009. We assumed linear interpolation for the missing years between 1994 and 2000. We have filled gaps in the data series up to 2009 using growth rates from EIA (CO₂ emissions from fuel combustions) (Energy Information Administration, 2017) and US-EPA (non-CO₂ emissions) (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2012).

Current policy projections

Due to limited data availability the CAT at present does not have a current policy scenario for Bhutan. Instead as an approximation we continue to include a reference scenario which is based on the ADB report (ADB, 2013b). We have applied the growth rates from the ADB “reference” scenario to the historical emissions up to 2030.

Additional policy projections

Additional policy projections are based Bhutan’s“Energy Efficiency Roadmap (Draft Report)” by the Department of Renewable Energy (Department of Renewable Energy, 2018). The report contains policies for energy efficiency improvements in the buildings, appliances and industry sectors. The resulting emissions reductions are presented as a reduction from baseline emissions for each sector. This reduction from the baseline emissions in 2030 forms the basis for our current policy projection calculations. The reduction from the baseline is converted to a percentage reduction in each year from 2016 – 2030 which is then applied to our BAU scenario.