INDC pledges roll in from China, Australia, Japan and more

Countries continue to outline their positions on addressing emissions in advance of this year’s UN climate conference

Pledges for action on climate change keep arriving in the form of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – the vehicle in which nations are detailing how they will address emissions for the UN COP21 climate negotiations at the end of the year in Paris. 

Arguably the most anticipated INDC, and the one that fittingly gathered the most reaction, was that of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter China, which arrived at the end of June.

In its INDC China reaffirms a goal it already announced in a joint commitment with the US last November – to peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. It also includes a new promise to reduce the carbon intensity of its GDP by between 60% and 65% from 2005 levels, as well as to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in its energy mix by around 20% by 2030. The World Resources Institute (WRI) says the last commitment alone would require China to deploy around 1 TW of non-fossil capacity – or roughly the US’ entire electricity generation portfolio. 

The new carbon intensity target builds on China’s existing target to reduce intensity by 40–45% by 2020 and is roughly consistent with scenarios showing China’s carbon dioxide emissions peaking in 2030, says WRI. In addition the country plans to increase its forest cover by 50–100mn ha to act as a carbon sink.

While some argued that the INDC could be more ambitious, others pointed out that it is important that China has even submitted one – without which negotiations would surely be fruitless. In addition to climate concerns China is also heavily motivated by local air quality issues stemming from the huge amount of coal it burns.

In other INDC news, at the time of writing Australia had just submitted its INDC in which Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott ignored his own Climate Commission’s recommendation to cut emissions by 40–60% and instead opted for a 26­–28% cut from 2005 levels by 2030.

Other notable recent submissions include Japan, which was criticised for submitting what many saw as a weak effort to cut emissions by 26% on 2013 levels by 2030; New Zealand (a 30% reduction on 2005 levels by 2030); and Iceland, which intends to join the EU effort to collectively reduce emissions by 40% on 1990 levels. At the time of writing, and according to the website Carbon Brief, 53 out of 196 countries had submitted INDCs, covering 60% of territorial emissions.

More detail on INDC pledges so far can be found at bit.ly/1EbueWz