Climate Change Mitigation Targets Research Articles

Performance analysis of deep borehole heat exchangers for decarbonization of heating systems

AbstractMeeting the climate change mitigation targets will require a substantial shift from fossil to clean fuels in the heating sector. Heat pumps with deep borehole exchangers are a promising solution to reduce emissions. Here the thermal behavior of deep borehole exchangers (DBHEs) ranging from 1 to 2 km was analyzed for various heat flow profiles. A strong correlation between thermal energy extraction and power output from DBHEs was found, also influenced by the heating profile employed. Longer operating time over the year typically resulted in higher energy production, while shorter one yielded higher average thermal power output, highlighting the importance of the choice of heating strategy and system design for optimal performance of DBHEs. Short breaks in operation for regenerating the borehole, for example, with waste heat, proved to be favorable for the performance yielding an overall heat output close to the same as with continuous extraction of heat. The results demonstrate the usefulness of deep boreholes for dense urban areas with less available space. As the heat production from a single DBHE in Finnish conditions ranges from half up to even a few GWh a year, the technology is best suitable for larger heat loads.

A value-based framework from Building Stock Model to Retrofit Model

The study has as its original database the decarbonization process initiated in Mexico by the National Commission for the Efficient Use of Energy (CONUEE) as part of its “Savings Program of Electric Power in Buildings of the Federal Public Administration” (PAEIAPF) of 1999. The primary purpose of PAEIAPF was to reduce the levels of electric power consumption in Federal Government buildings. The program has operated for 20 years; however, its scope only reaches operational carbon. Since 90% of existing buildings will be in use by 2050, the Retrofit Models will be the base to determine solutions for a more resilient living environment that fortifies and extends the grid’s capacity and meets climate change mitigation targets. Secondly, significant socioeconomic and profound environmental impacts are not calculated explicitly in existing tools and are often referred to as “secondary” or Non-Energy Benefits (NEB). “The goal is to give them a measurement value to be considered in the decision-making calculus. It is assumed that soon; such factors will enter the general climate change economy, not unlike carbon in the past decade.” In this context, the proposed research aims to develop a value-based framework that will support a Building Stock Model and subsequent Retrofit Models, documented in a web-tool platform. The framework has three main steps:A) Building Stock Model: Mapping of selected buildings of the program PAEIAPF in a GIS system. Documentation of the baseline energy consumption and embodied CO2-eq of the existing building.B) Retrofit Models: Involving a Whole Life Cycle Assessment (WLCA) and Non-Energy Benefits (resilience coefficient, health, productivity).C) Web Tool Platform: Application and toolset that allows for consistent documentation, environmental impact evaluation of existing building stock, and solution design in identifying energy reduction concepts.

The untapped health and climate potential of cycling in France: a national assessment from individual travel data

Promoting active modes of transportation such as cycling may generate important public health, economic, and climate mitigation benefits. We aim to assess the mortality and morbidity impacts of cycling in a country with relatively low levels of cycling, France, along with associated monetary benefits. We further assess the potential additional benefits of shifting a portion of short trips from cars to bikes, including projected greenhouse gas emissions savings. Using individual data from a nationally representative mobility survey, we described the French 2019 cycling levels by age and sex. We conducted a burden of disease analysis to assess the incidence of five chronic diseases (breast cancer, colon cancer, cardiovascular diseases, dementia, and type-2 diabetes) and the number of deaths prevented by cycling, based on national incidence and mortality data and dose-response relationships from meta-analyses. We assessed the corresponding direct medical cost savings and the intangible costs prevented based on the value of a statistical life year. Lastly, based on individual simulations, we assessed the likely additional benefits of shifting 25% of short (<5km) car trips to cycling. The French adult (20-89 years) population was estimated to cycle on average 1 min 17 sec pers-1 day-1 in 2019, with important heterogeneity across sex and age. This yielded benefits of 1,919 (uncertainty interval, UI: 1,101-2,736) premature deaths and 5,963 (UI: 3,178-8,749) chronic disease cases prevented, with males reaping nearly 75% of these benefits. Direct medical costs prevented were estimated at €191 million (UI: 98-285) annually, while the corresponding intangible costs were nearly 25 times higher (€4.8 billion, UI: 3.0-6.5). We estimated that on average, €1.02 (UI: 0.59-1.62) of intangible costs were prevented for every km cycled. Shifting 25% of short car trips to cycling would yield approximatively a 2-fold increase in deaths prevented, while also generating important CO2 emissions reductions (0.257 MtCO2e, UI: 0.231-0.288). In a country with a low- to moderate-cycling culture, cycling already generates important public health and health-related economic benefits. Further development of active transportation would increase these benefits while also contributing to climate change mitigation targets. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Attitudes towards technology and their relationship with pro-environmental behaviour: Development and validation of the GATT scale

Both behavioural changes and technological advances are needed to mitigate climate change and solve environmental issues. While optimistic attitudes towards technology can help to increase public support for these technological advances, they could also attenuate the perceived necessity for pro-environmental behaviour change. This is problematic, as an overreliance on technological solutions at the cost of behavioural changes could decrease the probability of meeting established climate change mitigation targets. Across three studies in Switzerland (n1 = 552, n2 = 547, n3 = 549), we introduce and validate a 15-item survey instrument to measure general attitudes towards technology (GATT), namely techno-pessimistic, techno-optimistic, and techno-fix attitudes. Confirmatory factor analysis confirms the robustness of the instrument and models based on Item Response Theory indicate acceptable item fit indices. We then investigate how these different attitudes relate to pro-environmental behavioural intentions. Our results show that techno-fix attitudes are negatively associated with behavioural intentions, while techno-optimistic and techno-pessimistic attitudes are positively associated with behavioural intentions through an increase in climate change concern. To foster engagement in pro-environmental behaviour, we recommend strengthening techno-optimistic instead of techno-fix narratives, by highlighting the importance of individual behaviour changes for achieving climate change mitigation.

Investigating Barriers to Low-Carbon Policy Implementation among Mining Companies in Ghana

Efforts for carbon emission reduction have been identified as a major climate change mitigation target in the Paris Agreement. The 26th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change highlighted the worldwide effort for cleaner and greener mining, urging the mineral industry to embrace greener operational emissions reduction technologies and strategies. At the Paris Conference, Ghana pledged to reduce CO2 emissions by 15% and increase its renewable energy share to 10% of the national energy mix. Ghana’s efforts to implement a low-carbon policy were, however, hampered for several reasons. Ghana is Africa’s leading and the world’s seventh largest gold producer. Mining has contributed significantly to foreign currency acquisition and government revenue. The gold mining sector contributes approximately 95% of Ghana’s total mineral revenue. Considering these situations, the fundamental question is how Ghana’s mining industry can contribute to CO2 emission reduction efforts. This paper investigates barriers to low-carbon emission policy implementation among mining companies in Ghana. We adopted 5-point Likert scale statement questions. The questionnaire survey was conducted among Ghana’s four large-scale gold mining companies. As the sample number of available companies is limited, we used a descriptive analysis to assess the responses. The results show that the companies expressed widely different ways to respond to the issues of cost, a government policy for carbon emission reduction, and the acquisition of low-carbon technologies. Those companies that are relatively less prepared for this endeavor emphasized the uncertainties of securing sufficient energy in case of using low-carbon technologies. They also expressed a need for more trained workers to handle low-carbon technologies. We found that a major challenge among companies was the expected cost involved in implementing a low-carbon emission policy. There was a communication gap with the relevant government ministry about low-carbon mining options where the government should be able to facilitate the involvement of low-carbon technology providers, such as solar Photovoltaics installation.

Kajian Alokasi Global Carbon Budget kepada National Carbon Budget Indonesia

Climate change and global warming are directly linked to the rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere, a significant byproduct of various human activities, particularly the combustion of fossil fuels. To regulate Earth's surface temperature within specified limits, the concept of a carbon budget is introduced. This budget represents the maximum cumulative carbon emissions that can be emitted to the atmosphere before the earth’s global temperature exceeds some particular temperature levels. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report 6 (IPCC AR6), maintaining a temperature increase within 1,5 to 2°C requires adhering to a global carbon budget (GCB) of approximately 500 to 1.350 GtCO2 (at a 50% likelihood level). To determine the national carbon budget (NCB) for Indonesia, various allocation methods, including egalitarian, grandfathering, weighted average, and per capita convergence approaches, are applied. At a 50% likelihood level to restrict temperature rise to 1.5°C, Indonesia's NCB at the beginning of 2022 falls within the range of 14.28 to 20.55 GtCO2. These values for the carbon budget can serve as a valuable tool for assessing the climate change mitigation targets outlined in Indonesia's enhanced nationally determined contribution (E-NDC).

Mathematical modeling of vehicle carbon dioxide emissions

The demand for transportation, driven by an increasing global population, is continuously rising. This has led to a higher number of vehicles on the road and an increased reliance on fossil fuels. Consequently, the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels has contributed to global warming. Therefore, it is important to consider sustainable transportation practices to meet climate change mitigation targets. In this research paper, a non-linear mathematical model is developed to study the dynamics of atmospheric CO2 concentration in relation to human population, economic activities, forest biomass, and vehicle population. The developed model is analyzed qualitatively to understand the long-term behavior of the system's dynamics. Model parameters are fitted to actual data of world population, human economic activities, atmospheric CO2, forest biomass, and vehicle population. It is shown that increased vehicular CO2 emissions have a potential contribution to the increase in atmospheric CO2 and the decline of human population. Numerical simulations are carried out to verify the analytical findings and we performed global sensitivity analysis to explore the impacts of different sensitive parameters on the CO2 dynamics.

The unanticipated role of fiscal environmental expenditure in accelerating household carbon emissions: Evidence from China

Fiscal environmental expenditure (FEE) is crucial to achieving climate change mitigation targets; however, its role in reducing household carbon emissions has received little attention. By matching household-level data from the Chinese General Social survey 2015; Cgss 2015) with city-level data, this study investigated the impact of FEE on household carbon emissions. The results show that FEE significantly increased household carbon emissions through reduced satisfaction with environmental governance. Meanwhile, public service satisfaction, household income, energy intensity and location are important moderating mechanisms. Moreover, FEE has a more significant impact on carbon emissions for households with urban hukou status and light burdens, as well as for those living in big northern cities with a slow GDP growth rate. This study reveals the unexpected mechanism underlying FEE's impact on carbon emissions in the household sector.

Nature-based solutions in agricultural landscapes for reducing tradeoffs between food production, climate change, and conservation objectives

This paper presents a synthesis of evidence and implementation gaps in the application of nature-based solutions (NbS) in agricultural landscapes that contribute to reduce trade-offs between food production, climate change and conservation objectives. The literature and data surveyed relies primarily in peer-reviewed sources and is organized around an overview of NbS science and applications in agricultural landscapes in major biomes. To date, the focus of NbS applications in food production has been predominantly for carbon sequestration, water quality, and disaster-risk management objectives while documented examples of NbS benefits in agricultural production are sparse. Conservation applications of NbS appear to show evidence of effectiveness across multiple objectives in biodiversity, land, soil and water. Evidence and analysis of NbS to meet climate change mitigation targets has surged in recent years driven by global community efforts. Overall, considerable scientific work remains to refine and reduce the uncertainty of NbS benefit estimates across production, climate and conservation objectives, and resilience implications. However, delaying implementation of NbS in agricultural landscapes would likely increase the costs to meet agricultural production, climate, conservation and other societally beneficial goals, while degrading the capacity of natural systems to continue to provide these and other ecosystem services.

Optimal design of a sector-coupled renewable methanol production amid political goals and expected conflicts: Costs vs. land use

Methanol is an important bulk chemical which can be produced from renewable resources with the currently available technologies and doing so has a high potential for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions for the chemical sector. Reaching the targets for climate change mitigation and biodiversity protection will require designing not only renewable, but also land-efficient chemical production systems. However, under the current economic imperative of cost minimization, the efficient use of land is often not considered during production system design and compromise solutions are left undiscovered, the potential of land-use intensifying technologies stays unknown and the impact of their exclusion, e.g. due to political reasons, is not quantified. This study addresses these issues for renewable production of methanol through the biogas- and power-to-methanol production pathways, which are considered concurrently with processes allowing intensified land use (agrivoltaics, wheat straw anaerobic digestion, heat pumps, wind turbines, etc.) in a previously unexplored technological scope. The designs, as well as the effect of coupling with other production systems (residential heat, electricity, and food) as a strategy to reduce the total annualized costs (TAC) and direct land use, are investigated using the FluxMax approach, an optimization-based design methodology. It simultaneously accounts for the, often neglected, dynamics of renewable energy harvesting, waste-heat utilization and biomass production under the fluctuating renewable resource and product-demand conditions of an example location in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Reductions of the TAC of 19 %, direct land use of 9 % and GHG emissions of 12 % for the production system by coupling all four of these products were determined. Furthermore, Pareto fronts were constructed to quantify the trade-off between the conflicting objectives of minimizing TAC and direct land use, demonstrating that land use can be reduced by up to 10 % with minimal extra costs among the available technologies. Political conflicts and goals, which may influence the deployment of the considered technologies, are discussed from a political science perspective and highlight the need for further interdisciplinary collaboration.

The role of climate-adaptive technological innovation in promoting agriculture carbon efficiency: impact and heterogeneity in economic development.

Achieving global climate change mitigation targets requires low-carbon production in agriculture. In such an endeavor, a new classification of climate-adaptive technology is defined to affect agriculture towards the low-carbon direction, but such an impact has seldom been empirically tested in the literature. In this paper, we investigate the impact of climate-adaptive technological innovation on agricultural carbon efficiency, a proxy for low-carbon agriculture. We use a stochastic directional distance function framework and a cross-country dataset covering 38 OECD countries. Additionally, we test the heterogeneous impact, considering that regional economic development is a crucial condition for deploying advanced technologies. The findings show that climate-adaptive technological innovation can promote carbon efficiency in agriculture, and this aggregate effect hides significant heterogeneity at different levels of economic development. The higher the economic development level is, the better climate-adaptive technological innovation contributes to improving agricultural carbon efficiency. Then, related policy implications are set forth.

Trends in agroforestry research over 4 decades

Agroforestry has a high potential to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation as a nature-based climate solution and is increasingly included as a climate strategy in international agreements and national plans. Yet, how to equitably increase and sustain agroforestry on the scale needed to meet these targets remains unclear. Examining broad trends in the existing 4 decades of agroforestry literature can highlight gaps and opportunities for future research that enables agroforestry transitions. Using text analytics and a full-text, corpus-based approach, we analyzed changes in word use in 9,664 agroforestry research articles and reports published between 1980 and 2020 with regard to 4 key themes of the social dimensions of agroforestry transitions: (1) agreements and policies; (2) scales and decision-making agents; (3) knowledge, culture, and equity; and (4) frameworks and methods. We then compared the frequency of these themes in research articles and reports. Despite the most frequently used terms across all 4 decades being primarily ecological (e.g., forest, species, soil), the lexicon of agroforestry literature has expanded to incorporate more social, economic, and political elements (e.g., livelihood, knowledge, community) over time, and as agroforestry has become more central to climate change adaptation and mitigation targets. Trends in the frequency of several terms (e.g., biodiversity, development, climate) corresponded with the signing of intergovernmental agreements, illustrating the responsiveness of the field to global priorities. Reports had a higher frequency of terms related to social themes than research articles. We discuss the implications of these emergent trends and opportunities for future research in support of sustainable and just agroforestry transitions.

Comparing the Sequence of Climate Change Mitigation Targets and Policies in Major Emitting Economies

The Paris Agreement requires that countries submit and update their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to mitigate global climate change. This study projected greenhouse gas emissions to evaluate the progress of 25 countries towards their original and updated NDCs. It found that almost one-quarter of the countries submitted more ambitious, updated NDCs without adopting sufficient policies to meet their original targets. Additionally, in most countries, updated NDCs lead to emissions above current policies. The findings also suggest that these patterns are influenced by national constraints, especially reliance on fossil fuels. Appropriate sequencing of ambition raising and policy adoption is urgently needed to translate the Paris Agreement into action.

How do countries frame climate change? A global comparison of adaptation and mitigation in UNFCCC National Communications

Self-reporting is an important mechanism of the UNFCCC to collect information about what countries are doing to achieve their climate change mitigation and adaptation targets and how much progress has been made. Here we empirically test four hypotheses about what countries prioritise in their self-reporting through the National Communications. Using quantitative text analysis methods (structural topic modelling and keyness statistics), we analyse over 600 submissions (from 1994 to 2019) and find evidence that vulnerable countries highlight impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation rather than mitigation targets, whereas high-emitting countries tend to focus their messaging more on mitigation. Despite the Paris Agreement being considered a “watershed moment”, we find no statistically significant increase in focus on climate solutions post-Paris, and no significant increase in attention to adaptation. Our global assessment and the methods used offer a novel perspective to understand what gets framed as important by governments. Finally, we provide reflections on how self-reporting mechanisms can be used for global stocktaking of progress on climate action.

Bioenergy-livestock integration in Brazil: Unraveling potentials for energy production and climate change mitigation

Future projections indicate an expansion for both food and energy demands, which can increase pressure on land use, while there is an urgent global need for climate change mitigation. Bioenergy is foreseen as key option to meet future energy demands and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, however its sustainability depends on locations and regional characteristics. Simultaneously, agricultural production models that co-produce food, feed, and energy offer sustainability synergies and co-benefits, but site-specific sustainability assessments of their large-scale implementation are missing. This study presents a bottom-up approach to assess spatially explicit sustainability aspects of bioenergy-livestock integrated systems (BLI) in Brazil and shed light on their contribution to future energy demands, to climate change mitigation targets, and their impacts on selected ecosystem services, including bioenergy production, climate change mitigation, reduction of food competition, biodiversity conservation, and avoided deforestation. The proposed integration considers livestock intensification and use of biofuels by-products as animal feed supplement, taking advantage of synergies between these two value chains. The expansion of the BLI system in the Center-South region of Brazil produce up to 89 billion liters of ethanol, enough to meet future domestic ethanol demands from multiple shared socioeconomic pathways and generating surpluses for export. This production takes place on 16 million hectares of pastureland within the Sugarcane Agroecological Zoning, excluding the Amazon and Pantanal biomes, and biodiversity hotspots. BLI expansion mitigate up to 250 million tonnes of CO2eq and generate 15 billion dollars of profits. The best locations to maximize the selected ecosystem services are west of São Paulo, east of Mato Grosso do Sul, and the south-central region of the states of Goiás. This study may encourage the formulation of enhanced public policies for the integration of bioenergy and livestock value chains and guide a sustainable large-scale deployment of BLI systems.

Changes and influencing factors of ecosystem resilience in China

The multifunctionality and sustainability of ecosystems are strongly dependent on their ability to withstand and recover from disturbances—that is, ecosystem resilience (ER). However, the dynamics and attributes of ER remain largely unknown, especially in China, where climatic and anthropogenic pressures are high. In this study, we evaluated spatiotemporal patterns of ER in China from 2001 to 2020 using solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence. We estimated the relative independent importance of climate change, CO2, and anthropogenic factors on changes in ER signals. The results showed that more than half of the ecosystems in the study area have experienced ER gain followed by ER loss during the past two decades. Before breakpoints (BPs), climate change explained 58.29% of the ER change associated with increasing precipitation. After BPs, 65.10% of the ER change was most affected by CO2, and drought from rising temperature further deteriorated ER loss. We highlight that relationships between changes in ER and climate are spatially heterogeneous and suggest increased negative radiative effects of CO2, associated with global warming, on ecosystem stability due to the saturated canopy photosynthesis. These findings have crucial implications for future climate change mitigation, carbon peak, and carbon neutrality targets.

Spatial predictions and uncertainties of forest carbon fluxes for carbon accounting

Countries have pledged to different national and international environmental agreements, most prominently the climate change mitigation targets of the Paris Agreement. Accounting for carbon stocks and flows (fluxes) is essential for countries that have recently adopted the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting - ecosystem accounting framework (UNSEEA) as a global statistical standard. In this paper, we analyze how spatial carbon fluxes can be used in support of the UNSEEA carbon accounts in five case countries with available in-situ data. Using global multi-date biomass map products and other remotely sensed data, we mapped the 2010–2018 carbon fluxes in Brazil, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Sweden and the USA using National Forest Inventory (NFI) and local biomass maps from airborne LiDAR as reference data. We identified areas that are unsupported by the reference data within environmental feature space (6–47% of vegetated country area); cross-validated an ensemble machine learning (RMSE=9–39 Mg C textrm{ha}^{-1} and textrm{R}^{2}=0.16–0.71) used to map carbon fluxes with prediction intervals; and assessed spatially correlated residuals (<5 km) before aggregating carbon fluxes from 1-ha pixels to UNSEEA forest classes. The resulting carbon accounting tables revealed the net carbon sequestration in natural broadleaved forests. Both in plantations and in other woody vegetation ecosystems, emissions exceeded sequestration. Overall, our estimates align with FAO-Forest Resource Assessment and national studies with the largest deviations in Brazil and USA. These two countries used highly clustered reference data, where clustering caused uncertainty given the need to extrapolate to under-sampled areas. We finally provide recommendations to mitigate the effect of under-sampling and to better account for the uncertainties once carbon stocks and flows need to be aggregated in relatively smaller countries. These actions are timely given the global initiatives that aim to upscale UNSEEA carbon accounting.

Under what circumstances can the forest sector contribute to 2050 climate change mitigation targets? A study from forest ecosystems to landfill methane emissions for the province of Quebec, Canada

AbstractMeeting climate change mitigation targets by 2050, as outlined in international pledges, involves determining optimal strategies for forest management, wood supply, the substitution of greenhouse gas‐intensive materials and energy sources, and wood product disposal. Our study quantified the cumulative mitigation potential by 2050 of the forest sector in the province of Quebec, Canada, using several alternative strategies and assessed under what circumstances the sector could contribute to the targets. We used the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector to project ecosystems emissions and sequestration of seven alternative and one baseline (business‐as‐usual [BaU]) forest management scenarios over the 2018–2050 period. Three baskets of wood products were used in a Harvested Wood Products model to predict wood product emissions. The mitigation potential was determined by comparing the cumulative CO2e budget of each alternative scenario to the BaU. The proportion of methane emissions from landfills (RCH4%) and the required displacement factor (RDF) to achieve mitigation benefits were assessed both independently and jointly. The fastest and most efficient way to improve mitigation outcomes of the forest sector of Quebec is to reduce end‐of‐life methane emissions from wood products. By reducing methane emissions, the RDF for achieving mitigation benefits through intensification strategies can be reduced from 1.2–2.3 to 0–0.9 tC/tC, thus reaching the current provincial mean DF threshold (0.9). Both a reduction and an increase in the harvested volume have the potential to provide mitigation benefits with adequate RCH4% and RDF. Increased carbon sequestration in ecosystems, innovations in long‐lived wood products, and optimal substitution in markets offer potential avenues for the forest sector to contribute to mitigation benefits but are subject to significant uncertainties. Methane emission reduction at the end of wood product service life is emerging as a valuable approach to enhance mitigation benefits of the forest sector.

Global residential scenarios towards low energy and material demands

Transition to low energy and material demand (LEMD) for buildings is key to reach climate change mitigation and sustainability targets but will require unprecedent technological and social transformations. Scenarios addressing LEMD transformations for the global building sector are still largely unexplored. In this study, we assess global residential energy and material demands until 2050 for three alternative sustainable development pathways (SDPs): Economy-driven innovation (EI), driven by technology and energy efficiency; Resilient communities (RC), a post-growth scenario centred around local communities and behavioural change; and Managing the global commons (MC), with strong global institutions and high electrification. We use the bottom-up framework MESSAGEix-Buildings, soft-linked to the integrated assessment model MESSAGEix-GLOBIOM, to model the three SDPs for the global residential sector. We show that the RC scenario entails the highest potential towards reducing energy and material demand driven by behavioural change. The EI and MC scenarios are characterized by relatively higher energy and material demand levels and might require additional efforts on the supply-side to reduce total building-related operational and construction greenhouse gases emissions. This study can support decision making on strategies towards sustainability and zero-energy and emission targets in the buildings sector.

Sharing the decarbonisation effort: getting Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East countries on the road to global carbon neutrality

ABSTRACT To achieve the Paris Agreement’s goals of keeping the global temperature rise well below 2 °C, or even better below 1.5 °C, relative to pre-industrial levels by the end of this century, countries need to make fair and ambitious contributions to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Here, three clusters are proposed that encompass fourteen approaches derived from three main equity principles to determine equitable national emission allocations in the year 2030 for the seventeen countries in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) region. The allocations are compared with the Nationally Determined Contributions of each country in order to assess the degree to which current EMME climate change mitigation targets are sufficient. The results suggest two approaches that may be considered both realistic and fair, although with the caveat that both rich and poor EMME countries may still have reason to resist the allocations indicated by these approaches. One of these two approaches relates to the principle of responsibility and the other relates to a combination of capability and responsibility. Both require emissions in the EMME region to drop by nearly 50% by 2030 as compared to 2019 levels so as to be in line with a 1.5 °C warming scenario.