Comparing emissions mitigation efforts across countries

Abstract

A natural outcome of the emerging pledge and review approach to international climate change policy is the interest in comparing mitigation effort among countries. Domestic publics and stakeholders will have an interest in knowing if peer countries are undertaking (or planning to undertake) comparable efforts in mitigating their GHG emissions. Moreover, if the aggregate effort is considered inadequate in addressing the risks posed by climate change, then this will likely prompt a broader interest in identifying those countries where greater effort is arguably warranted based on comparison with their peers. Both assessments require metrics of effort and comparisons among countries. We propose a framework for such an exercise, drawing from a set of principles for designing and implementing informative metrics. We present a template for organizing metrics on mitigation effort, for both ex ante and ex post review. We also provide preliminary assessments of effort along emissions, price, and cost metrics for post-2020 climate policy contributions by China, the European Union, Russia, and the United States. We close with a discussion of the role of academics and civil society in promoting transparency and facilitating the evaluation and comparison of effort.

Policy relevance

Statement: Our article presents a framework for the review of intended nationally determined contributions and the ex post review of contributions under the UNFCCC negotiations. We provide an illustration of this framework with an energy-economic model. Our work focuses on how countries may use the review to compare mitigation effort – planned under INDCs and delivered by implementation of the pledged contributions – to address concerns about equity, efficiency, competitiveness, and the stability of any agreement that arise in international negotiations.

Keywords:

• emission mitigation
• intended nationally determined contributions
• international environmental agreements
• modelling analysis
• policy surveillance
• reciprocity

JEL Codes:

• Q54
• Q58
• F55

Acknowledgments

We have benefitted from comments on our work at the 2014 Lima UN climate change talks, seminars at Resources for the Future and the Sanford School of Public Policy, as well as from Brian Flannery, Clayton Munnings, Ray Kopp, Mits Yamaguchi, and three referees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 A number of groups began discussing the pledges leading up to the 2015 Paris talks (e.g. Climate Action Tracker, 2014; WRI, 2015).

2 The variation in data and methods employed in country-produced national communications preclude a meaningful comparison across countries at a point time (i.e. across a given vintage of national communications) (Thompson, 2006).

3 Note that a number of eastern European and former Soviet republics listed in Annex B of the Kyoto Protocol could employ alternative base years for their commitments.

4 We do not discuss emissions per capita as a measure of effort. Emissions per capita has been discussed as an ethical basis for allocating emission mitigation responsibility. We therefore include it in our discussion of how one might benchmark appropriate effort levels across countries.

5 This is also relevant for comparing CO₂:GDP intensity levels.

6 Related to these papers, the Government of South Africa proposed an equity reference framework for INDCs in the lead-up to the 2015 Paris climate negotiations.

7 For these modelling simulations, we are thus illustrating this framework by applying the countries' INDCs only to fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions.

8 The recent bilateral China–US climate agreements also suggest that they view each other as partners.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth.