How to evaluate commitments and progress towards “Net Zero Emissions”

In line with the pri­ma­ry tar­get set for COP26 in Glas­gow in 2021¹, more and more coun­tries are com­mit­ting to achieve zero net emis­sions (NZE²) by the mid­dle of this cen­tu­ry and to strength­en their nation­al­ly deter­mined con­tri­bu­tions (NDCs³) by 2030. Today, more than 139 coun­tries and unions, includ­ing Chi­na, the Unit­ed States and the Euro­pean Union, cov­er­ing about 83% of glob­al emis­sions, have announced this NZE target. 

Sub-nation­al actors and the pri­vate sec­tor are also step­ping up their own com­mit­ments to reduce emis­sions, includ­ing through the Race to Zero campaign.

Launched at the UNSG Cli­mate Action Sum­mit 2019 by Chilean Pres­i­dent Sebastián Piñera, Race to Zero mobilis­es actors out­side nation­al gov­ern­ments to join the Cli­mate Ambi­tion Alliance and com­mit to halv­ing glob­al emis­sions by 2030. As of Sep­tem­ber 2022, 11,309 non-state actors have com­mit­ted to the cam­paign, includ­ing 8,296 com­pa­nies, 593 finan­cial insti­tu­tions, 1,136 cities, 52 states and regions, 1,125 edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions, 64 health insti­tu­tions and 29 oth­er organisations.

But do we real­ly have the tools to assess and mea­sure these com­mit­ments? Not real­ly, and it is to fill this gap that the OECD has devel­oped an inno­v­a­tive tool for mea­sur­ing and assess­ing nation­al com­mit­ments: the Inter­na­tion­al Pro­gramme for Cli­mate Action (IPAC).

Ini­tial­ly pro­posed by France and pub­licly sup­port­ed by Pres­i­dent Macron on the occa­sion of the OECD’s 60th anniver­sary in Decem­ber 2020, IPAC was launched in May 2021 and is based on four components:

• First, a dash­board of cli­mate-relat­ed indi­ca­tors, mea­sur­able and agreed between coun­tries for use in monitoring.
• Sec­ond, an annu­al cli­mate action mon­i­tor, based on the pre­vi­ous dash­board, pro­vides a sum­ma­ry of coun­tries’ progress towards their own cli­mate and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment goals. This mon­i­tor pro­vides exam­ples of good prac­tice and results in cli­mate mit­i­ga­tion and adaptation.
• This is fol­lowed by a coun­try rat­ing tool based on envi­ron­men­tal, social and geo­graph­i­cal indi­ca­tors and con­tain­ing tar­get­ed pol­i­cy advice to help design eco­nom­i­cal­ly viable mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion actions.
• Final­ly, an inter­ac­tive plat­form for dia­logue and mutu­al learn­ing between coun­tries with dis­cus­sion top­ics on inno­v­a­tive approach­es and good practices.

The phi­los­o­phy behind this approach is to avoid inef­fec­tive or coun­ter­pro­duc­tive poli­cies, which is eas­i­er said than done giv­en the scale of the response required and the need to con­stant­ly adapt to chang­ing nation­al and glob­al cir­cum­stances. IPAC fun­da­men­tal­ly address­es the need for deci­sion-mak­ers to have access to com­pre­hen­sive cli­mate data and tools for mean­ing­ful mon­i­tor­ing, bench­mark­ing, and pol­i­cy analysis.

Using IPAC, gov­ern­ments are able to see where they are, where they are going and how they can improve.

The ben­e­fit of these four IPAC tools is that deci­sion-mak­ers can get both a gran­u­lar and com­pre­hen­sive overview of all rel­e­vant cli­mate-relat­ed data: emis­sions and their caus­es, risks and impacts, and respons­es and actions. In addi­tion, through its research and analy­sis of over 50 coun­tries, the IPAC team is able to har­ness and com­mu­ni­cate the breadth and depth of the data col­lect­ed, shar­ing best prac­tices and encour­ag­ing stake­hold­ers to learn from each oth­er. There­fore, by using the tools and infor­ma­tion col­lect­ed by IPAC, gov­ern­ments can see the big­ger pic­ture: where they are, where they are going and how they can improve.

At COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, OECD Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Math­ias Cor­mann pre­sent­ed the tool as part of a round­table dis­cus­sion at the French Pavil­ion on 7 Novem­ber 2022, with Agnès Pan­nier-Runach­er, France’s Min­is­ter for Ener­gy Tran­si­tion; Espen Barth Eide, Min­is­ter of Cli­mate and Envi­ron­ment in Nor­way; Max­i­m­il­iano Proaño Ugalde, Under­sec­re­tary of the Envi­ron­ment in Chile and Johan Rock­ström, Co-Direc­tor of the Pots­dam Insti­tute for Cli­mate Impact Research.

These indi­ca­tors play a key role in the sec­ond annu­al cli­mate report to be pub­lished in Novem­ber 2022: it high­lights coun­tries’ expo­sure to cli­mate-relat­ed risks, which are increas­ing in fre­quen­cy and inten­si­ty. To suc­cess­ful­ly mit­i­gate and adapt to these risks, this year’s IPAC Mon­i­tor advis­es gov­ern­ments to use all pol­i­cy tools and mech­a­nisms (non-mar­ket, mar­ket, etc.) at their dis­pos­al, as well as to increase the strin­gency of their measures.

In the case of France, IPAC shows for exam­ple that GHG emis­sion inten­si­ties per unit of GDP and per capi­ta are decreas­ing. This means that, over­all, France is decou­pling emis­sions from both eco­nom­ic out­put and pop­u­la­tion growth.

On the oth­er hand, the per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion exposed to sum­mer days with tem­per­a­tures above 35°C is increas­ing. Accord­ing to the IPAC score­board, this indi­ca­tor helps to under­stand the pos­si­ble risks of extreme tem­per­a­tures for the pop­u­la­tion. We should keep in mind that France can­not be sat­is­fied with mit­i­gat­ing long-term chron­ic risks and must find solu­tions to deal with acute risks, such as heat­waves, to which it is increas­ing­ly vulnerable.

In terms of “actions and oppor­tu­ni­ties”, we find that France is increas­ing­ly adopt­ing cli­mate poli­cies, but is not yet adopt­ing the full range of avail­able pol­i­cy options as mea­sured by the OECD, rep­re­sent­ed by the dot­ted line (OECD, 2022). 

Fur­ther­more, it appears that France has cur­rent­ly adopt­ed the largest share of avail­able poli­cies tar­get­ing all sec­tors, fol­lowed by those tar­get­ing the build­ing sec­tor. Giv­en that the French cli­mate strat­e­gy pri­ori­tis­es ener­gy effi­cien­cy in build­ings, it appears that pol­i­cy mak­ing here is aligned with nation­al and munic­i­pal tar­gets. Nev­er­the­less, France has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to adopt a broad­er set of poli­cies, espe­cial­ly those relat­ed to the elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor, where it is lag­ging behind.

In tack­ling cli­mate change, every coun­try goes through the inevitable process of deter­min­ing the most effec­tive poli­cies in a con­stant­ly chang­ing nation­al and inter­na­tion­al con­text. The urgency to find solu­tions con­tin­ues to grow, and while coun­tries have cer­tain­ly shown progress in their actions and ambi­tions, cur­rent nation­al cli­mate com­mit­ments are still not suf­fi­cient to meet the goals of the Paris Agree­ment. More­over, while coun­tries need to “scale up” their com­mit­ments, many are strug­gling to meet their cur­rent tar­gets. This OECD ini­tia­tive there­fore pro­vides much-need­ed sup­port and encour­ages stake­hold­ers not to shoot blind, but to rely on holis­tic and data-dri­ven tools.

Addi­tion­al data on emis­sions, impacts, risks, actions, and oppor­tu­ni­ties are avail­able in the IPAC dashboard. 

For more info

Nachti­gall, D., Lutz, L., Cár­de­nas Rodríguez, M., Haš­cic, I., and R. Pizarro (2022), “The cli­mate actions and poli­cies mea­sure­ment frame­work: A struc­tured and har­monised cli­mate pol­i­cy data­base to mon­i­tor coun­tries’ mit­i­ga­tion action”,  Envi­ron­ment Work­ing paper No. 203, Pub­li­ca­tion OECD Paris