Ukraine

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.

Historical emissions

The historical data for the years 1990 – 2018 is based on 2020 national inventory submissions that were reported in AR4 GWPs.

NDC and other targets

Target emission levels for 2020, 2030 and 2050 were calculated from the 2020 national inventory submissions (CRF, 2018). For Ukraine’s Copenhagen Pledge and NDC, we apply an accounting method that subtracts the projected LULUCF sink, assuming that LULUCF emissions in 2020 and 2030 remain at the historical average level over 2007–2018 (-12MtCO₂e), from the target level incl. LULUCF for 2030.

We calculated Ukraine's LULUCF accounting quantities for the first commitment period (2008–2012) for afforestation, reforestation and deforestation using the current Kyoto rules. The Ukraine has submitted information on their forest reference level, which is equal to their 1990 forest management emissions and removals.

Current policy projections

The historical data (1990-2018) are based on 2020 national inventory submissions (UNFCCC, 2019). For the pre-pandemic current policy projections for the energy and industry sectors we used the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario published as part of Ukraine’s 2050 Low Emission Development Strategy (Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine, 2018). Note that this scenario is a hypothetical scenario, where the characteristics for most of the technologies in energy resources usage and household consumption, and also at any stage of goods or services production, stay unchanged between 2012 and 2050. This means that this scenario is based on conservative assumptions. However, we still decided to use this BAU pathway for the energy and industry sectors as it takes account of more recent historical data years and better reflects recent developments than the previously used scenarios from Ukraine’s Sixth National Communication.

Since the 2050 Low Emission Development strategy does not contain information on agriculture and waste sectors, the current policy projections for the agriculture and waste sectors are based on the ‘without measures’ and ‘with measures’ scenarios from Ukraine’s Sixth National Communication (CRF, 2016). The ‘with measures’ scenario includes the Underlying Principles (Strategy) of the State Environmental Policy of Ukraine and the National Plan on Climate Change Mitigation and Prevention of Human Impact on Climate Change for the Period up to 2030. However, due to the current political instability and the lack of clear supporting policies tabled or discussed, it is not certain that the ‘with measures’ scenario is an adequate reflection of Ukraine’s current policy pathway in these sectors. For this reason, the ‘without measures’ scenario, which assumes that GHG emission footprints of all sectors of the economy will remain constant, is included as the upper bound to the current policy projection range. However, both scenarios assume an annual GDP growth of 2.9% between 2010 and 2020, whereas actual GDP has decreased with 3% between 2010 and 2018 (World Bank Group, 2019). This overestimation of GDP growth suggests that the emission projections in both scenarios may be inflated. As of July 2020 there are no alternative sources available to develop other current policy projections for Ukraine.

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, usually prepared before the pandemic. We then distil the emission intensity (GHG emissions/GDP) from this pre-pandemic scenario and apply to it most recent GDP projections that take into account the effect of the pandemic. For 2020 – 2022 we use post-COVID GDP growth rates provided by the IMF. From 2023 onwards we then apply the GDP growth until 2030 that was used as a basis for the original pre-pandemic current policy scenario.

Global Warming Potential values

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).