Abstract
The objective of the United Nations Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2°C, with efforts to reach 1.5°C, requires a strict limitation of future global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions based on a global carbon budget. Applying equity considerations allows for the derivation of national carbon budgets. A key question then arises: How can these national budgets be allocated at the sectoral level? A new method is proposed to allocate carbon budgets at the sectoral level. First, a cost-based approach is used to indicate a necessary carbon budget for each sector. However, the aggregation of these initial sectoral carbon budgets usually exceeds the available national carbon budget. This indicates the relevance of working with sectoral carbon budgets and the required reductions to remain within the overall national carbon budget. This conceptual approach aims at, first, a cost-effective sectoral effort-sharing; second, the design of corresponding strict carbon emission reduction pathways (at both the sector and aggregate levels); and, third, the redesign of investment policies for capital stock improvements to remain within the aggregate carbon budget (involving trade-offs in investment induced emissions for operational emission reduction). Policy relevance Limiting global warming according to the United Nations Paris Agreement requires a strict limitation of future global GHG emissions. A new method is presented to allocate national carbon budgets to the national sectoral level. The carbon budget concept has the potential to provide a transparent and informative tool for the analysis, policy design and monitoring of GHG emission pathways, particularly for the long time horizons involved. The area of activity involving the construction and use of buildings, termed embodied and operational GHGs, requires a particularly large fraction of the national carbon budget. Compared with other sectors, these activities have the highest potential for keeping countries within their national carbon budgets as far as enabling capital stock improvements are concerned that over-proportionally reduce use emissions. The approach can link carbon budgets at the municipal, city and regional levels. It could lend itself to an initially voluntary initiative, later compulsory policy framework for substantial and cost-effective emission reductions.
Highlights
The United Nations Paris Agreement target of staying well below 2°C of warming with efforts to keep 1.5°C severely limits the remaining global carbon budget (GCB)
To that end the concept applied considers the lifetime of sectoral capital stocks, and, in a first step, assumes their substitution by capital stocks that allow for carbonfree operation only at the end of their lifetime
The case of Austria shows that the derived first-step sectoral carbon budgets at the national aggregated value exceeds the available carbon budget for all types of definitions
Summary
The United Nations Paris Agreement target of staying well below 2°C of warming with efforts to keep 1.5°C severely limits the remaining global carbon budget (GCB). Instruments or projects addressing combined aspects of spatial planning and housing construction/refurbishment/energy planning will as a result influence (production-based) carbon budgets of the construction and the use of buildings (heating and electricity) and of the transport sector These specified necessary carbon budgets (or future emissions) correspond with a quantity that has been calculated at the aggregated global level in a different strand of literature: the emissions a society has committed to by the existing fossil fuel infrastructure (Davis et al 2011). Recent sectoral emission levels, following a production-based emission accounting are used together with historic capital stock use times for each of the sectors (based on existing literature) for the application of the phase-out approach to derive necessary sectoral carbon budgets. Such a shift will increase the carbon budget for the sector with the largest initial sectoral carbon budget (construction) even further
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