Evaluations on Emission Reduction Efforts of the INDCs and the Expected Global Emissions

As the submissions of national greenhouse gas reduction target (INDC) beyond 2020 are in process, RITE has analyzed and evaluated emissions reduction effort of countries that have submitted INDCs by October 1, 2015.

To assess "emissions reduction efforts" appropriately is crucial for providing the effectiveness to the emissions reduction target in INDCs, or prompting more emissions reduction if possible. As there is no unique indicator to rate the fairness and equity of emissions reduction efforts, we adopted a multifaceted approach by using a number of relevant indicators for the assessment.

Then we integrated those multiple indicators and ranked emissions reduction effort (degree of ambition) of each country.

We also assessed expected greenhouse gas emission forecast at the fulfillment of INDCs, as well as expected temperature increase.

In order to accomplish effective emissions reduction, it is important for countries to implement the PDCA cycle with appropriate review. RITE will continue to analyze and assess based on the latest data.

Evaluations on Emission Reduction Efforts of the INDCs and the Expected Global Emissions(PDF file 2,123KB)

In the tool to calculate countries' degrees and rankings of emissions reduction effort below, weighting of the assessment indicators can be adjusted freely.

We adopted 7 indicators for assessing "emissions reduction effort". These indicators are categorized into 6 and weighted, then calculated as an integrated assessment value of "degrees of efforts(ambitious)".

Because the values used in our analysis to rank countries by "degrees of efforts(ambitious)" are standard values, and they does not bear so strong arguments that there remains rooms for executing sensitivity analysis.

Please try modifying the weighting to see the values of the integrated assessment "degrees of efforts(ambitious)" change.

Default values are the standard values adopted in RITE analysis.

There are simple version and detailed version, and weighting of the latter is consisted of 2 layers.

Assessment indicator of emissions reduction efforts

Please refer to the bottom of this page for the explanation of assessment indicator and weighting.

Reduction ratio compared to base year/emissions per capita

CO₂ intensity

Emissions reduction ratio compared to BAU

CO₂ marginal abatement cost

Retail prices of energy

Emission reduction costs per GDP

Emission reduction efforts (ambition)

Indicators for emissions reduction efforts evaluation

Emissions reduction efforts evaluation method		Framework	Notes
Emissions reduction ratio from base year (only for OECD countries or Annex I countries)	Compared to 2005	When baseline emissions are expected to stagnate, it is more relevant to simply compare the projected reduction rates (all the more since there are uncertainties regarding the BAU). This is why we use the reduction ratio compared to BAU for OECD countries only - on the other hand, such an approach would be irrelevant for countries where emissions are expected to grow substantially.	Most countries use 2005 as their base year (as a matter of fact, 1990 seems too far in the past to be used as a base year to evaluate the emissions reduction effort for upcoming emissions)
	Compared to 2012 (or 2010)		This seems a relatively good choice to evaluate future efforts as it allows assessing reduction ratios in comparison with recent circumstances.
Emissions per capita (only for non-OECD countries or non-Annex I countries)	Absolute value	For OECD countries, we adopt the reduction ratio from base year instead of this indicator.	As it is highly dependent on the country's level of economic activity and situation in general, it can be difficult to assess emissions reduction efforts through this indicator.
CO₂ intensity (GHG emissions per GDP)	Absolute value	Reveals what level of CO₂ emissions corresponds to what degree of economic activity	It can easily reach bad values for countries with a low GDP; it is also highly dependent on the country's industry structure.
CO₂ intensity (GHG emissions per GDP)	Improvement rate (compared to 2012 or 2010)	As it removes the bias due to the fact that economic growth has changed compared to the base year, it reveals the real effort in emission reduction.	For countries with a low GDP, carbon intensity can improve greatly just due to high economic growth.
Emissions reduction ratio compared to BAU		It allows taking into account the difference of economic growths, etc.	It puts aside past efforts in energy savings and abatement potential of renewables.
CO₂ marginal abatement cost (carbon price)		This is a particularly relevant indicator to assess reduction efforts as it contains countries' differences in terms of economic growth, energy savings efforts, abatement potential of renewables.	Past measures such as taxes on energy are out of the scope (however, one must keep in mind that, as energy savings efforts have already been made in the past, this may lead to higher estimates of marginal abatement costs.)
Retail prices of energy (electricity, city gas, gasoline, diesel)	Weighted average of historical data from 2012 or 2010	While marginal abatement costs show the additional effort to be made, this indicator also includes the efforts made in the baseline.	Market data is available for ex-post evaluation, but for ex-ante evaluation, only model-based estimates are available which makes uncertainties rather high.
Emission reduction costs per GDP		As marginal abatement costs do not take into account the economy's ability to bear such an effort, this indicator does.	Uncertainties are high as this is a model-based estimation.

Weighting for the assessment of emissions reduction efforts

	Emissions reduction efforts evaluation method		Weighing for the ranking
1	Emissions reduction ratio compared to base year (only for OECD countries or Annex I countries)	Compared to 2005	1.0	(for OECD countries or Annex I countries)	*0.5*
		Compared to 2012 (or 2010)			*0.5*
	Emissions per capita (only for non-OECD countries or non-Annex I countries)	Absolute value		(other)	*1.0*
2	CO₂ intensity (GHG emissions per GDP)	Absolute value	1.0	*0.5*
		Improvement rate (compared to 2012 or 2010 for emerging countries)		*0.5*
3	Emissions reduction ratio compared to BAU		1.0
4	CO₂ marginal abatement cost (carbon price)		1.0
5	Retail prices of energy (electricity, city gas, gasoline, diesel)	Electricity	1.0	*0.333*
		City gas		*0.333*
		Gasoline, diesel (weighted average of historical data from 2012 or 2010)		*0.333*
6	Emission reduction costs per GDP		1.0