Kazakhstan

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 data are based on most recent national inventory submissions reported in AR4 GWPs (Republic of Kazakhstan, 2019). The 2019 historical emissions times series differs significantly from previous historical emissions source used previously, notably in the Energy Sector and LULUCF sector, more specifically on Forest Lands and Crop Lands. LULUCF emissions reported in 2018 for the time series 1990-2016 were positive. i.e. generating GHG emissions, whereas emissions reported in 2019 for the same time period were sinks. This variation, particularly notable on base years 1990 (+47MtCO₂) and 1992 (+40MtCO₂), impacts targets and emissions projections described in the following sections.

NDC pledge

The NDC, 2020 and 2050 targets were calculated from the national inventory submissions (Republic of Kazakhstan, 2019), based on information provided in the third biennial report (Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan, 2017). Since the targets include LULUCF, these were converted to values excluding LULUCF for comparability purposes assuming a net-net approach in light of other information. Given the variation in historical emissions used for 2018 update and 2019 update (see historical emissions section), a difference from the previous update is to be noted in the targets.

The Kyoto pledge is calculated based on the official documentation provided by the UNFCCC (UNFCCC, 2012b, 2012a). We calculated Kazakhstan’s LULUCF accounting quantities in 2020 for afforestation, reforestation and deforestation using the current Kyoto Protocol’s rules. Forest management was calculated also with current Kyoto rules, with the cap set at 3% of base year or 15% of forest management, whichever is lower.

Current policy projections

Current policy projections stem from the “with measures” scenario from the BR CTF submission workbook Table 6(a) (Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan, 2017). Growth rates from the “with measures” scenario were applied to the most recent historical year data (2017).

All scenarios in Kazakhstan’s national communication assume an annual GDP growth of an average of 3.5% till 2020 and 3% after 2020. The growth assumptions until 2020 lie slightly above forecasts by the IMF and World Bank, which project annual GDP growth rates of average of 2.9% and 2.8%, respectively (IMF, 2017; Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan, 2017; World Bank, 2018).

The “with measures” scenario includes measures and policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that have been taken and are planned to be adopted in the near future. The majority of these measures possess sufficient certainty to be treated as a current policy scenario in our analysis. They include the plan of measures for the development of alternative and renewable energy sector in Kazakhstan with aims for total installed capacity of renewables to reach 1,700 MW by 2020; the concept for the development of the fuel and energy complex which aims to put a nuclear power plant with the capacity of 1GW into operation in 2030, as well as all new or existing processes related to energy efficiency improvements (Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan, 2017). Since Kazakhstan relaunched its ETS system in January 2018, the expected mitigation impact is not yet included in the “with measures” scenario, when the cap is set at a 5% reduction by 2020 below 1990 levels in specific sectors: power sector and centralised heating, extractive industries and manufacturing: oil and gas mining, metallurgy, chemical and processing industry (production of building materials: cement, lime, gypsum, and brick).