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Long-term scenarios: Energy pathways in the UK

Nature Energy volume 2, Article number: 17034 (2017) Cite this article

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The bottom-up approach promoted through the Paris Agreement and signed in 2016 requires the definition of accurate and realistic national pathways to cut emissions. A recent study applied to the UK energy system shows that current UK policy on climate change is incompatible with the most stringent climate objectives.

The failed attempt to agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) in Copenhagen in 2009 initiated a new bottom-up approach to climate cooperation that culminated with the COP21 negotiations in Paris in 2015. The Paris Agreement marks a milestone in the history of climate negotiations. It solidifies the recent move away from the top-down architecture around which the Kyoto Protocol was built towards the loosely coordinated national pledges epitomized by the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). NDCs, the centrepiece of the recent Paris Agreement, are non-binding national pledges for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. While the agreement has been largely welcomed as a success in breaking the negotiation stalemate on how to equitably share the burden of mitigation, the perceived diplomatic breakthrough is in part due to the watering down of its terms. While its predecessors relied on legally binding targets and timetables, the Paris Agreement relies on voluntary actions in the hope that they will scale up to the task of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels1. The voluntary nature of the NDCs begs the question of whether the national commitments undertaken in Paris will suffice to achieve such an ambitious target.

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Figure 1: Emission pathways for the UK energy system under different transition scenarios.

References

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  1. Alessandro Tavoni is at the Grantham Research Institute and at the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.,

    Alessandro Tavoni

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  1. Alessandro Tavoni
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Correspondence to Alessandro Tavoni.

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Tavoni, A. Long-term scenarios: Energy pathways in the UK. Nat Energy 2, 17034 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2017.34

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