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. 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 data, GHG inventory data submitted to the UNFCCC accessed via the UNFCCC data portal was used for 1990 and 1994 (UNFCCC, 2019) and the Third Biennial Update Report from 2019 for data from 2000 to 2015, with linear interpolation between 1990–1994 and 1994–2000. CO₂e values from CH₄ and N₂O were recalculated with AR4 Global Warming Potentials (GWPs).

For the year 2016 and 2017, we use growth rates from IEA statistics (IEA, 2019a) for CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion applied to the 2015 inventory data point. For non-CO₂ emissions and non-energy CO₂ emissions, we use the same data as under current policies (see section below).

2020 pledge

In its 2020 emissions 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 IEA World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2019 for CO₂ emissions from fuel combustion (IEA, 2019b) and non-CO₂ emissions from the US EPA (2019). For CO₂ process emissions we assume a direct correlation to emissions from coal-fired power plants. The WEO2019 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 WEO2019 main report nor its annexes specify which of the policies have been included in the current policies scenario. The WEO2019 “Stated Policies Scenario” leads to very similar emissions projections for the power sector as the CAT’s projections.

As for the energy supply sector, the renewable energy capacity assumed to be installed in the WEO2019 by 2030 was adjusted to reflect the IRP2019 for all technologies. 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 October 2019. For non-CO₂ emissions, US EPA (2019) projections until 2030 were used. For the CO₂ process emissions, historical CO₂ process emissions data from EDGAR (Olivier, Muntean, & Peters, 2016) was used to check the correlation to emissions from coal-fired power plants. For projections, CAT assumes that this correlation will continue, meaning that we assume CO₂ process emissions to develop with the same trend as the CO₂ emissions from coal fired power plants in our current policy projections.

Global Warming Potentials

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).