@article{BertramRiahiHilaireetal.2021, author = {Bertram, Christoph and Riahi, Keywan and Hilaire, J{\´e}r{\^o}me and Bosetti, Valentina and Drouet, Laurent and Fricko, Oliver and Malik, Aman and Nogueira, Larissa Pupo and van der Zwaan, Bob and van Ruijven, Bas and van Vuuren, Detlef P. and Weitzel, Matthias and Longa, Francesco Dalla and de Boer, Harmen-Sytze and Emmerling, Johannes and Fosse, Florian and Fragkiadakis, Kostas and Harmsen, Mathijs and Keramidas, Kimon and Kishimoto, Paul Natsuo and Kriegler, Elmar and Krey, Volker and Paroussos, Leonidas and Saygin, Deger and Vrontisi, Zoi and Luderer, Gunnar}, title = {Energy system developments and investments in the decisive decade for the Paris Agreement goals}, series = {Environmental research letters}, volume = {16}, journal = {Environmental research letters}, number = {7}, publisher = {IOP Publishing}, address = {Bristol}, issn = {1748-9326}, doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/ac09ae}, pages = {12}, year = {2021}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{RiahiBertramHuppmannetal.2021, author = {Riahi, Keywan and Bertram, Christoph and Huppmann, Daniel and Rogelj, Joeri and Bosetti, Valentina and Cabardos, Anique-Marie and Deppermann, Andre and Drouet, Laurent and Frank, Stefan and Fricko, Oliver and Fujimori, Shinichiro and Harmsen, Mathijs and Hasegawa, Tomoko and Krey, Volker and Luderer, Gunnar and Paroussos, Leonidas and Schaeffer, Roberto and Weitzel, Matthias and van der Zwaan, Bob and Vrontisi, Zoi and Longa, Francesco Dalla and Despr{\´e}s, Jacques and Fosse, Florian and Fragkiadakis, Kostas and Gusti, Mykola and Humpen{\"o}der, Florian and Keramidas, Kimon and Kishimoto, Paul and Kriegler, Elmar and Meinshausen, Malte and Nogueira, Larissa Pupo and Oshiro, Ken and Popp, Alexander and Rochedo, Pedro R. R. and {\"U}nl{\"u}, Gamze and van Ruijven, Bas and Takakura, Junya and Tavoni, Massimo and van Vuuren, Detlef P. and Zakeri, Behnam}, title = {Cost and attainability of meeting stringent climate targets without overshoot}, series = {Nature climate change}, volume = {11}, journal = {Nature climate change}, number = {12}, publisher = {Nature Publishing Group}, address = {London}, issn = {1758-678X}, doi = {10.1038/s41558-021-01215-2}, pages = {1063 -- 1069}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Global emissions scenarios play a critical role in the assessment of strategies to mitigate climate change. The current scenarios, however, are criticized because they feature strategies with pronounced overshoot of the global temperature goal, requiring a long-term repair phase to draw temperatures down again through net-negative emissions. Some impacts might not be reversible. Hence, we explore a new set of net-zero CO2 emissions scenarios with limited overshoot. We show that upfront investments are needed in the near term for limiting temperature overshoot but that these would bring long-term economic gains. Our study further identifies alternative configurations of net-zero CO2 emissions systems and the roles of different sectors and regions for balancing sources and sinks. Even without net-negative emissions, CO2 removal is important for accelerating near-term reductions and for providing an anthropogenic sink that can offset the residual emissions in sectors that are hard to abate.}, language = {en} }