Proposals for Quantifiable Emission Reduction Contributions of Emerging Economies

  • Project no.1251
  • Duration 08/2008 - 08/2010

The project findings have been published by the German Environment Agency in the series Climate Change (no. 07/2011). A short and long version is available for download. This report shows is a first comparable overview of the national climate plans of Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea. The aggregated reductions of the climate plans are quite substantial and would lead to substantive emission reductions if implemented as planned. The estimates show that national climate plans could lead to a joint emission reduction of 25 percent below BAU by 2020.
The report also compared for the first time the mitigation potential scenarios to what various effort-sharing approaches would suggest.
China’s climate plan is very ambitious according to the interpretation and well beyond the co-benefit potential. Many measures of the plan are already implemented and it is roughly in line with results of effort-sharing approaches. Under all effort sharing approaches, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea have to achieve a significant deviation from the reference by 2020 and well beyond the co-benefit potential. Only Mexico has proposed action in its climate plan that is in line with these results. Brazil's climate plan can be judged as ambitious but depends on the successful halting of deforestation. India's plan is the least concrete, reflecting the relative development state of India compared to the other countries. Nevertheless, according to the report interpretation India's plan does not even attain the level of the co-benefit potential and should therefore be further strengthened.
A closer analysis of the details of the national plans reveals that the level of ambition varies significantly between sectors. Even the plans of the more ambitious countries all have some "blind spots", that is emission reduction potentials that seem not be addressed in the national plans. Significant further improvements of the ambition level may therefore be possible without too much effort.



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