Morocco

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

For historical emissions, we used national GHG inventory data provided by Morocco’s 1st and 2nd Biennial Update Reports (BURs) (Government of Morocco 2016d; 2019). The historical data was revised significantly downwards in the 2nd BUR compared to data in the 1st BUR; for example in 2012, data for all GHG emissions (incl. LULUCF) from the 2nd BUR is 21 MtCO₂e lower than in the 1st BUR. There is currently no explanation for this data change but we will update this section in case a technical annex to the 2nd BUR is published. We have chosen to use historical emissions from the 2nd BUR, as it is the most up-to-date dataset available, and have harmonised the two datasets as described below.

The 2nd BUR covers data from 2010 to 2016 while the 1st BUR covers data from 1994 to 2012. For the years 2010–2016 we directly use data from the 2nd BUR. For data from 1994 to 2009, we use values from the 1st BUR but harmonise these to the 2nd BUR data, using a scaling factor from 2010 data. For the historical years before 1994, we used a linear backward extrapolation of the trend between 1994 and 2012.

NDC and other targets

The targeted emissions levels including land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) for both the unconditional and conditional 2030 pledge are provided in Morocco’s NDC submission (Government of Morocco 2016c). All projections are calculated using NDC reference values converted from SAR to AR4.

To recalculate NDC targets only excluding emissions from LULUCF, we subtract projections of LULUCF emissions from the NDC targets. We derived these projections by taking the BAU emissions projections for the LULUCF sector provided in the 3rd National Communication and accounting for targeted emissions reductions from the LULUCF sector under the NDC based on the reported sectoral breakdown of total emissions reduction contributions between 2020 and 2030 in the NDC (see Figure 2 in Government of Morocco 2016a)

Current policy projections

Current policy projections are based on BAU emissions projections provided in the 3rd National Communication (Government of Morocco 2016b). In addition to the BAU scenario, the current policy projections consider several sectoral policies under implementation. The 1st and 2nd Biennial Update Reports (BURs) outline a number of policy measures and their anticipated mitigation potential. We lack up to date information on the state of implementation of some the new policies in the 2nd BUR, and therefore present our current policy scenario as a range.

For the upper end of the current policy scenario, we use the measures presented in the 1st BUR (Government of Morocco 2016d). It considers targets for the extension of national wind farms, solar parks, and hydropower capacity by 2020, energy efficiency programmes in the building sector, public lighting and the industry sector (excluding large energy consuming industries) as well as the extension of Rabat and Casablanca tramways. The 1st BUR provides annual emission reduction estimates by 2020 and 2030 for the all the aforementioned policies (Government of Morocco 2016d). The extension of wind, solar and hydro capacity by 2020 is estimated to reduce emissions by 11 MtCO₂e annually (Government of Morocco 2016d).

The upper end, while based on the same policies as in previous updates, is lower in our current update due to changes in historical data (see Historical emissions section for additional information)—and due to a decrease in emissions brought by the COVID-19 pandemic (see details under COVID-19 impacts section).

For the lower end of the current policy scenario, we use the measures listed in the 2nd BUR (Government of Morocco 2019). The 2nd BUR includes the same policies as in the ‘upper end’ scenario but it also includes policies in the agriculture and waste sectors and adds mitigation from combined cycle power plants. The mitigation potential from measures in the transport sector and from renewable energy have also been revised upwards.

COVID-19 impact

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 first update the current policy projections using most recent projections, prepared before the pandemic. We then distil the emission intensity (GHG emissions/GDP) from this pre-pandemic scenario and apply to it the most recent GDP projections that take into account the effect of the pandemic for the years 2020 and 2021. To capture a wide range of scenarios, we have used several different GDP growth projections for Morocco (AFDB 2020; IMF 2020; World Bank 2020). The table below lists the different sources that we used and the respective GDP growth projections (in percentages) each of them predict. Given the most recent GDP projections only provide values for the next couple of years, we use the GDP growth until 2030 that was used as a basis for the original pre-pandemic current policy scenario.

Global Warming Potential values

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