Limiting global warming to 1.5 deg C likely if EU 17 nations exceed current emission targets

New Delhi, Nov 13 (PTI) Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is still possible if the European Union and 17 other countries, including the United States and China, went beyond their current emission targets, a new study has suggested.
     Researchers proposed an indicator -- 'additional carbon accountability' -- to measure how much each country should reduce or remove carbon dioxide emissions beyond their current national commitments.
     The additional carbon accountability looks at how much a country is financing carbon removal or emissions reductions outside of its territories, the researchers, including those from Stockholm University, explained.
     The authors also found that the per capita additional carbon accountability was the highest for the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
     "The ambition of this article is to suggest opportunities to enhance climate fairness and close the mitigation gap in the real world, based on the Paris Agreement," Thomas Hahn, from Stockholm University and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
     Transitioning away from fossil fuels is said to be key to reducing emissions, in turn critical for achieving the Paris Agreement goals of limiting the planet's warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.
     For the study, the researchers assessed each country's share of the remaining 1.5 degrees Celsius carbon budget, based on per capita emissions since 1990 and per capita share of the remaining carbon budget.
     This was then compared to the country's actual carbon debts -- the difference between carbon footprint and efforts taken to counter it -- and future emissions targets, thereby producing an "additional carbon accountability".
     The authors identified 18 high-income and upper-middle-income countries that should be accountable for increasing their ambitions to stay within their per capita share of the global carbon budget for 1.5 degrees Celsius.
     High-income countries tend to have large carbon debts, while upper-middle income countries tend to have high emissions projected for the future. For the study, the EU was considered as one country.
     As an example, the researchers explained that besides reaching its 2030 reduction target and net zero by 2050, the EU would need to remove an additional 48 gigatonnes (billion metric tonnes) of carbon dioxide or finance additional reductions beyond current targets in other countries.
     For China, the additional carbon accountability is 150 gigatonnes and for the US, 167 gigatonnes, the authors said.
     "Our results highlight that meeting the 1.5 degrees Celsius target to a large extent is reliant on large historic emitters like the EU and the US paying off their historic carbon debts, and countries with plans for future large emissions, like China and Iran, setting stricter reduction targets," co-author Robert Hoglund, Marginal Carbon AB, Sweden, said.

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