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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.

Pledges

Targets for 2020 and 2030 were calculated from the most recent national inventory submissions (CRF, 2017), which do not include emissions from aviation and shipping.

The calculations of the 2030 target reflect the agreement between the European Parliament and the Council concerning the inclusion of emissions and removals from the LULUCF from December 2017, which allows the utilisation of credits from removals from that sector of up to 280 MtCO₂ in the period 2021–2030 to meet the emissions reduction target in the non-ETS sector (European Parliament 2018a). Since the removals have not been included in 1990 emissions levels, this means potential for weakening of the 2030 emissions reduction target. For the calculations made here we assume that the member states will take advantage of this mechanisms throughout the whole of the 2021-2030 period. That would potentially weaken EU 2030 emissions reduction target by 28 MtCO₂ annually or 0.8% of the 2030 emissions.

Current policy projections

The current policy projections are based on two scenarios: The “With Existing Measures” scenario by the European Environment Agency is a bottom-up scenario based on biannual reports by the member states. The 2018 version of the scenario only reflects changes submitted by Ireland and Cyprus. Thus it doesn’t reflect the legislative effort undertaken in 2018 and afterwards in the almost all EU member states (European Environment Agency 2018b).

The second scenario was prepared for the EU long-term strategy “A Clean Planet for All” published in November 2018. It has been developed using the PRIMES model, which also takes into consideration the adoption of the renewable energy and energy efficiency goals (European Commission 2018c). The figures were harmonized to the latest inventory historical data.