TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bertram, Christoph
A1  - Riahi, Keywan
A1  - Hilaire, Jérôme
A1  - Bosetti, Valentina
A1  - Drouet, Laurent
A1  - Fricko, Oliver
A1  - Malik, Aman
A1  - Nogueira, Larissa Pupo
A1  - van der Zwaan, Bob
A1  - van Ruijven, Bas
A1  - van Vuuren, Detlef P.
A1  - Weitzel, Matthias
A1  - Longa, Francesco Dalla
A1  - de Boer, Harmen-Sytze
A1  - Emmerling, Johannes
A1  - Fosse, Florian
A1  - Fragkiadakis, Kostas
A1  - Harmsen, Mathijs
A1  - Keramidas, Kimon
A1  - Kishimoto, Paul Natsuo
A1  - Kriegler, Elmar
A1  - Krey, Volker
A1  - Paroussos, Leonidas
A1  - Saygin, Deger
A1  - Vrontisi, Zoi
A1  - Luderer, Gunnar
T1  - Energy system developments and investments in the decisive decade for the Paris Agreement goals
JF  - Environmental research letters
N2  - The Paris Agreement does not only stipulate to limit the global average temperature increase to well below 2 °C, it also calls for 'making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions'. Consequently, there is an urgent need to understand the implications of climate targets for energy systems and quantify the associated investment requirements in the coming decade. A meaningful analysis must however consider the near-term mitigation requirements to avoid the overshoot of a temperature goal. It must also include the recently observed fast technological progress in key mitigation options. Here, we use a new and unique scenario ensemble that limit peak warming by construction and that stems from seven up-to-date integrated assessment models. This allows us to study the near-term implications of different limits to peak temperature increase under a consistent and up-to-date set of assumptions. We find that ambitious immediate action allows for limiting median warming outcomes to well below 2 °C in all models. By contrast, current nationally determined contributions for 2030 would add around 0.2 °C of peak warming, leading to an unavoidable transgression of 1.5 °C in all models, and 2 °C in some. In contrast to the incremental changes as foreseen by current plans, ambitious peak warming targets require decisive emission cuts until 2030, with the most substantial contribution to decarbonization coming from the power sector. Therefore, investments into low-carbon power generation need to increase beyond current levels to meet the Paris goals, especially for solar and wind technologies and related system enhancements for electricity transmission, distribution and storage. Estimates on absolute investment levels, up-scaling of other low-carbon power generation technologies and investment shares in less ambitious scenarios vary considerably across models. In scenarios limiting peak warming to below 2 °C, while coal is phased out quickly, oil and gas are still being used significantly until 2030, albeit at lower than current levels. This requires continued investments into existing oil and gas infrastructure, but investments into new fields in such scenarios might not be needed. The results show that credible and effective policy action is essential for ensuring efficient allocation of investments aligned with medium-term climate targets.
KW  - Paris Agreement
KW  - energy investments
KW  - mitigation policies
KW  - climate policy
KW  - integrated assessment modelling
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac09ae
SN  - 1748-9326
VL  - 16
IS  - 7
PB  - IOP Publishing
CY  - Bristol
ER  -