Ethiopia

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. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with warming of greater than 4°C if all other sectors were to follow the same approach.

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. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with warming between 3°C and 4°C if all other sectors were to follow the same approach.

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. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with warming over 2°C and up to 3°C if all other sectors were to follow the same approach.

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. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with holding warming below, but not well below, 2°C if all other sectors were to follow the same approach.

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. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target 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. No “role model” rating has been developed for the sectors.

1.5°C Compatible< 1.5°C World

Historical emissions

The historical dataset is based on the Second National Communication (NC2), which covers the period for 1994–2013 (Ministry of Environment and Forest, 2015). We have extended this series for 1990-1993 and 2014-2017 using PRIMAP data based on country reporting (Gütschow et al., 2019). The total GHG emissions for 2013 reported in NC2 is around 7 MtCO₂e higher than the sum of the individual gases (in contrast to other years where the sum and the total match). We assume the total is the correct figures. As we needed gas by gas data for one of our current policy projections, we have scaled up these figures so that they equate to the total.

The series is compromises of the three main GHG emissions: CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O.

Pledges and targets

The 2020 target consists of a list of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 2010). We have not attempted to quantify this target.

Targets for 2030 including land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) are based on the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) submission data. We calculate the target excluding LULUCF by deducting LULUCF emission projections in 2030 contained in the Climate Resilient Green Economy Strategy (CRGE) (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 2011).

Current policy projections

The lower bound of our pre-COVID-19 current policy projection is based on a combination of the Stated Policies Scenario from IEA’s Africa Energy Outlook 2019 for CO₂ emissions from fuel combustion and non-CO₂ emissions from the US EPA (IEA, 2019; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2019). In general, neither the IEA Africa Energy Outlook 2019 report nor its annexes specify which of the policies have been included in the stated policies scenario. For non-energy CO₂, we assume the same trend as energy CO₂ emissions using a five-year average (2013-2017).

The upper-bound of our pre-COVID-19 current policy projection assumes that GHG emissions will grow according to the revised business as useful (BAU) scenario projections provided in the Second National Communication submitted to the UNFCCC (Ministry of Environment and Forest, 2015). Since the base year for the baseline scenario is 2010, some differences emerge when comparing the projections with the inventory data which extends to 2017. We have harmonised the series to the last historical year (2017).

COVID-19 Impacts

We applied a novel method to estimate the COVID-19 related dip in greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 and the deployment through to 2030. The uncertainty surrounding the severity and length of the pandemic creates a new level of uncertainty for current and future greenhouse gas emissions. We distilled the emission intensity (GHG emissions/GDP) from the pre-pandemic policy projections (see Current policy projections above). For our lower bound estimate, the GDP growth was taken from the IEA’s Africa Energy Outlook 2019. The Second Communication does not provide detailed GDP data or projections; however, it did refer to a GDP growth rate of 8.4% for the BAU case. We applied this growth rate to the World Bank’s estimate of Ethiopian GDP in 2011 to the upper bound estimate (World Bank, 2020a). These emission intensity estimates were then applied to the most recent GDP projections from the World Bank and the IMF for Ethiopia that take into account the effect of the pandemic (IMF, 2020; World Bank, 2020b). Both estimate GDP growth to be 3.2% in 2020, while the World Bank estimates slower growth (3.6%) than the IMF (4.3%) in 2021. As these estimates only cover 2020 and 2021, we used the GDP growth that was expected pre-pandemic to extent the projections until 2030.

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).