Of 63 scenarios compatible with the target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, 27 had high feasibility concerns
Photo: iStock The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change advised that the European Union set very ambitious emissions reduction intermediate targets.
The EU should move forward with reducing greenhouse gas emissions by a whooping 90-95% by 2040 relative to 1990 levels, according to the advisory body that published a set of recommendations June 15, 2023.
The European Green Deal’s current mandate stated that the region must become climate neutral by mid-century. European Green Deal, launched in 2019, is a set of policy initiatives to guide the EU towards reaching climate neutrality by 2050.
It also has an immediate target of net greenhouse gas emissions reduction of at least 55 per cent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. The targets are legally binding under the European Climate Law, which established the advisory board.
Along with an analysis conducted by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the advisory board said the pathways should not only be fair, but most importantly, feasible and consistent,with the EU’s climate commitments, the board said.
"If the 2030 target were met, however, then the 2040 and 2050 targets would also be within reach,"Ottmar Edenhofer, chairman of the advisory board, told the media.
“From a total of 63 scenarios that were compatible with the target of 1.5°C and the European Climate Law, 27 scenarios were identified with high feasibility concerns. This left us with 36 scenarios that were recommended for further analysis by the advisory board,” researcher Elina Brutschin at Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions Research Group in the IIASA Energy, Climate and Environment Program, said in a media release.
After the board invited the research community to submit data on emissions scenarios to widen its evidence base in 2021, as many as 1,062 scenarios were developed from global-, regional- and national-level integrated assessments and energy system models.
The assessment relies on the best practices used in the 6th Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Of the 1,062 scenarios studied with regional data and various interchangeable variables, 492 passed the vetting process that assessed their quality with respect to the plausibility of near-term emission reduction and energy supply. "Where necessary, scenarios were rescaled for consistency at the EU level and harmonized to observational estimates of emissions and energy supply in 2019," the report stated.
"Scenarios were subsequently also assessed with respect to their climate outcomes, to determine compatibility with global emissions pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C, as well as compliance with the EU 2030 and 2050 GHG targets", the report added.
"However, most scenarios fall within the medium level of concerns regarding biomass and hydrogen, and over 40 per cent of scenarios are highly concerning in terms of the scale-up of carbon storage and utilisation by 2050," the report said.
Nearly all scenarios raise medium-level concerns in terms of the assumed speed of coal phase-out and declines in final energy consumption by 2030, it added.
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