4


EMISSIONS GAP REPORT 2018 – TRENDS AND PROGRESS TOWARDS THE CANCUN PLEDGES, NDC TARGETS AND PEAKING OF EMISSIONS


Figure 2.1: Number of countries that have peaked or are committed to peaking their emissions, by decade (aggregate) and percentage of global emissions covered (aggregate).


Number of countries that have peaked:


19


Percentage of global emissions covered by these countries:


21% By 1990 Source: Levin and Rich (2017). 18% By 2000 36% By 2010 40% By 2020 60% By 2030 53 49 33 57


Of the 19 countries that peaked their emissions in or prior to 1990, 16 were former Soviet republics or economies in transition or both.2


Other countries that


peaked by 1990 include Germany and Norway. By 2010, 39 of the world’s 43 Annex I countries peaked their emissions. The 10 non-Annex I countries that peaked by 2010 or earlier are Azerbaijan, Brazil, Costa Rica, Georgia, Micronesia, Moldova, Montenegro, San Marino, Serbia and Tajikistan. Brazil is the first major emitting developing country to peak their emissions, reaching a maximum level in 2004.3


By 2020, all but one Annex I country (Turkey, an emerging economy) are expected to have peaked their emissions. 15 non-Annex I countries are committed to peaking their


emissions by 2030 or sooner, including China (for CO2 only) and Mexico,4


among others.


By 1990, three G20 members (the EU28, Germany and Russia)5


had peaked emissions. Half of G20 members


(additionally, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the USA) had peaked emissions by


are achieved. Given existing unconditional commitments, six G20 members’ GHG emissions show no sign of peaking, (Argentina, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa6


2010 and another four member countries’ emissions will peak by 2020 (Japan and the Republic of Korea), or by 2030 (China (for CO2


only) and Mexico) if commitments and Turkey).


Figure 2.1 indicates that the number of countries expected to peak by 2030 and the share of global emissions they represent is insufficient for global emissions to peak in the near future. The following sections provide further insight into issues relating to the timing of national and global peaking, the level of emissions peaking and the rate of decline in emissions following peaks, examining the status and trends in current global emissions and progress of G20 members.


2.3 Current global emissions: status and trends Total GHG emissions7,8,9


have increased steadily since 1970, with trend variations usually explained by changes


2 It should be noted that while some of these countries’ commitments for 2020 and 2030 indicate an intended increase from recent emissions levels (e.g. Russia), future commitments do not propose to surpass 1990 emissions levels.


3 Brazil’s peak and subsequent decline in emissions reduction is primarily the result of actions to reduce deforestation in the Amazon region (Azevedo, T. R. et al. (2018)). Any reversal of policy implementation could lead to increased emissions. Brazil’s emissions, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), have not yet peaked.


4 Mexico’s NDC mentions “a net emissions peak starting from 2026” (UNFCCC, 2016).


5 Russia’s emissions peaked prior to 1990. Although Russia’s commitments for 2020 and 2030 indicate an intended increase from recent emissions levels, its future commitments do not propose to surpass 1990 emissions levels.


6 As a conservative assumption, South Africa is not considered as having a firm commitment to peak, since there is no guarantee that the conditions upon which they made the pledge will be met.


7 This analysis is based primarily on GHG emissions data (fossil and industry CO2 v5.0 (CO2)/v4.3.2 FT2017 for non-CO2


and several revisions available for previous years. In total, these revisions show that total GHG emissions are roughly 0.9 GtCO2 Emissions Gap Reports.


others were used to estimate the 2012–2017 CH4 and N2


the energy consumption data have been revised and expanded to include updated energy statistics from the International Energy Agency (IEA) for the whole time series to 2015 instead of to 2012 (from v4.3.2 to v5.0) and revised BP statistics for the latest years. Furthermore, revisions for cement clinker and gas flaring were made using updated statistics, which also changed the data before 2012, and the coverage of 3 other sources was improved (ethylene production, other chemical product use and waste incineration).For non-CO2


gases (Olivier et al., 2018). The largest changes compared with v4.3.2 FT2016 (Olivier et al., 2017) are in the CO2 and sources of CH4 , N2


sources updated statistics from IEA, BP, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and UNFCCC (reported data), among O emissions. This means that statistics-based emissions are now updated to 2016 or 2017, with new statistics e higher than figures presented in recent


8 There are various estimates of emissions from LUC based on different system boundaries (Grassi et al., 2018) and different methods (Le Quéré et al., 2018). There is no commonly accepted value of emissions from LUC, with different estimates giving different emission levels and trends (Le Quéré et al., 2018). Global emissions from LUC also have large inter-annual variability driven by weather phenomena (e.g. El Niño). For this reason, LULUCF is not a focus of the analysis of global or country GHG trends.


9 Alternative datasets exist (particularly for CO2 focuses only on one dataset.


emissions), though they generally lead to the same conclusions due to similar growth rates. For this reason, the discussion O and fluorinated gases, but excluding land use CO2 ) using EDGAR emissions, since


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