Direct air capture (DAC) is critical for achieving stringent climate targets, yet the environmental implications of its large-scale deployment have not been evaluated in this context. Performing a prospective life cycle assessment for two promising technologies in a series of...
The potential impacts of climate change on various security dimensions are multifaceted. These potentially wide-spread risks have increased political concern along with scientific and security interests the last decade. The specific link between climate adaptation and...
By January 2022, 156 countries had submitted new or updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. This study analyses the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and macroeconomic impacts of the new NDCs.
The world is looking for ways to navigate challenges, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, food security and biodiversity loss, in order to safeguard current and future global well-being. These challenges are complex and deeply interrelated, which means coherent...
Large-scale bioenergy plays a key role in climate change mitigation scenarios, but its efficacy is uncertain. This study aims to quantify that uncertainty by contrasting the results of three different types of models under the same mitigation scenario (RCP2.6-SSP2),...
Despite the significant volume of fiscal recovery measures announced by countries to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, most recovery plans allocate a low percentage to green recovery. We present scenarios exploring the medium- and long-term impact of the COVID-19 crisis and...
Globally, the opportunity to use COVID-19 fiscal rescue and recovery spending to accelerate the low-carbon transition has largely been missed so far: the share of low-carbon fiscal spending ranges between 0.5%–2.5% in studies considering both rescue and recovery spending and...
How do we take stock of the state and changing trend of the world’s environment and draw lessons from policy experiences? Amongst the myriad detailed narratives about the condition of the planet, the periodic Global Environment Outlook (GEO), published by the United Nations...
In 2019, the growth in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (excluding those from land-use change) slowed down to 0.6%, reaching 51.7 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2 eq. This revised growth rate is half of last year’s estimate of 1.1% and less than half of the average...
The framework presented in this study aims to provide insights into how climate policy is represented in integrated assessment models, responding to the call to link model scenarios with concepts used in public policy literature and related fields. As such, it contributes to...
