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Measuring progress from nationally determined contributions to mid-century strategies

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 871–874 (2017)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 21 November 2017

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Abstract

The Paris Agreement requires countries to articulate near-term emissions reduction strategies through to 2025 or 2030 by communicating nationally determined contributions (NDCs), as well as encouraging the formulation of long-term low-emission development strategies (Article 4.19)1. In response, many countries have either submitted or are preparing mid-century strategies2. Most NDCs set high-level near-term goals—such as limits on emissions or emissions intensity3—which do not provide information about the extent to which they lay the foundations of technology, infrastructure and institutions for deeper reductions in the future, which is a key question for decision makers. Here, using a state-level model of the US embedded within a global integrated assessment model4,5, we demonstrate that although the US NDC lies on a straight-line emissions pathway towards its mid-century strategy, the resulting energy system transitions involve nonlinear transformations. The rates of capacity additions and capital investments in electricity generation beyond 2025 are more than three times the rates during the next decade. Our results demonstrate the need for global stocktaking exercises to evaluate the NDCs using metrics broader than emissions to better illuminate their effectiveness in addressing the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals6,7.

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Fig. 1: The US NDC and mid-century strategy.
Fig. 2: Capacity additions and premature retirements in the U.S. electric power sector.
Fig. 3: Capital investments in the U.S. electric power sector.

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Change history

  • 21 November 2017

    In the version of this Article previously published, technical problems led to the wrong summary appearing on the homepage, and an incorrect Supplementary Information file being uploaded. Both errors have now been corrected.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for research support provided by the MILES project Consortium under contract to DG CLIMA (No. 21.0104/2014/684427/SER/CLIMA.A.4). This project is funded by the European Union (EU). The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the EU or any government or organization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, College Park, MD, USA

    Gokul Iyer, Catherine Ledna, Leon Clarke, James Edmonds, Haewon McJeon & Page Kyle

  2. University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

    James H Williams

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Contributions

G.I., L.C. and J.E. designed the research. G.I. wrote the first draft of the paper. C.L. performed the model simulations. All the authors contributed to writing the paper.

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Correspondence to Gokul Iyer.

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A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-017-0027-3.

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Iyer, G., Ledna, C., Clarke, L. et al. Measuring progress from nationally determined contributions to mid-century strategies. Nature Clim Change 7, 871–874 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-017-0005-9

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