South Africa

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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.

Global Warming Potentials

Previous assessments of the Climate Action Tracker used the global warming potentials (GWPs) from the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report (SAR). For this assessment we have updated all figures and time series to GWPs from the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

Historical emissions

For historical data, GHG inventory data submitted to the UNFCCC accessed via the UNFCCC data portal was used for 1990 and 1994 (UNFCCC, 2017) and DEA’s Draft GHG Inventory for Republic of South Africa for 2000–2012 (Department of Environmental Affairs, 2016) with linear interpolation between 1990–1994 and 1994–2000. CO2e values from CH4 and N2O were recalculated with AR4 Global Warming Potentials (GWPs).

For 2013 to 2016, we use growth rates from IEA statistics (IEA, 2018a) for CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion applied to the 2012 inventory data point. For non-CO2 emissions and non-energy CO2 emissions, we use the same data as under current policies (see section below).

Pledge for 2020

In its 2020 emission reduction pledge, South Africa aims for a 34% reduction below BAU by 2020 and 42% below BAU by 2025 including LULUCF (Department of Environmental Affairs Republic of South Africa, 2011). The emission levels included under both the upper and lower bound of the targeted reductions are provided by the explanatory note. These targets are read directly off the peak, plateau and decline (PPD) emission trajectory graph (Department of Environmental Affairs Republic of South Africa, 2011). LULUCF sector emissions are assumed to be included in the targets because the 1997 data point in the graph matches the historical emissions including LULUCF. To obtain the emissions level excluding LULUCF, it was assumed that the LULUCF sector continues to represent a small net carbon sink with the emission level in 2030 equivalent to the average emissions from this sector over 2000–2012 (annual emissions of -17 MtCO2e). The same approach was used for the quantification of the NDC target and long-term target below.

In its NDC, South Africa provides the peak, plateau and decline (PPD) emission trajectory range of 398 MtCO2e to 614 MtCO2e including LULUCF by 2025 and 2030 (Government of South Africa, 2016).

South Africa further specified a long-term target until 2050. After PPD emission targets are set to remain stable until 2035, the PPD emission targets decrease to 212–428 MtCO2e by 2050 (Department of Environmental Affairs Republic of South Africa, 2011).

South Africa's NDC states that AR4 is being used for the pledge quantification (Government of South Africa, 2016, p. 7). Since the NDC is based on the original PPD submitted in 2011 (Department of Environmental Affairs Republic of South Africa, 2011), it is logical to assume that the PPD is reported in AR4 as well.

Current policy projections

The current policy projections are based on a combination of the World Energy Outlook 2018 for CO2 emissions from fuel combustion (IEA, 2018b), non-CO2 emissions from US EPA (2012), and a linear continuation of historical trends for CO2 process emissions. The WEO2018 Current Policies Scenario for CO2 emissions from fuel combustion assumes a slightly different energy mix for the electricity supply sector and the transport sector compared to target levels of policies considered under implementation, which has been adjusted to fully reflect these policies. In general, neither the WEO2018 main report nor its annexes specify which of the policies have been included in the current policies scenario.

As for the energy supply sector, the renewable energy capacity assumed to be installed in the WEO2018 was adjusted to reflect the 2010 IRP policy. The biofuels mandate has been furthermore quantified for informative purposes, however, it has not been included in the current policy projections as it is still not enforced as of February 2018. For non-CO2 emissions, US EPA (2012) projections until 2030 were used. For the non-energy CO2 emissions, historical non-energy CO2 emissions data from EDGAR (Olivier, Muntean, & Peters, 2016) was used for projections. CO2e values from CH4 and N2O were recalculated with AR4 Global Warming Potentials (GWP). A continuation of historical growth between 2000 and 2012 was assumed for future years.

The scenario “Projections incl. draft IRP 2018” illustrates the potential emissions in case of successful implementation of the draft IRP 2018. The lower bound takes the projected energy sector emissions of 215 MtCO2e provided by the draft IRP 2018 in Figure 11 for the IRP3 scenario (Department of Energy, 2018). The upper bound calculates energy sector emissions of 210 MtCO2e using load factors of the IRP3 scenario and installed capacity by of the policy adjusted IRP scenario, and the projected emission factors provided for South Africa in 2030 in the WEO2018. This compares to 231 MtCO2e by 2030 in the CAT’s current policy projection for the energy sector. Therefore, total emission reductions in 2030 would be 19–24 MtCO2e lower than under current policies.