From NDC to national long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies compatible with a 2 °C target

What the paper says

Given the lack of collective ambition resulting from the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the objective ofthe Paris Agreement, countries must submit revised and more ambitious NDCs. Countries are invited to formulate longtermlow greenhouse gas emission development strategies that should be designed within the context of otherdevelopment goals and co-benefits. This article addresses the issues related to the evaluation of national trajectoriesdeveloped in a cooperative framework aiming at collectively reaching 2°C and based on the integration of developmentpriorities and co-benefits into national trajectories. The national decarbonization trajectories discussed in this articlewere developed as part of the Deep Decarbonization Pathway Project (DDPP) by the 16 major GHG emitting countries.These 16 bottom-up decarbonization strategies are implemented in the POLES model, a partial equilibrium model of theglobal energy sector, which is an appropriate tool to provide a harmonized contextual framework for assessing thesetrajectories. The results make it possible to evaluate the gap between, on the one hand, national DDPP trajectories andNDCs and, on the other hand, national DDPP trajectories and a scenario resulting from a minimization of abatement costs.They allow to feed a discussion on the development of NDCs and the move away from national trajectories of trajectoriesminimizing the overall reduction cost and produced with integrated assessment models.