New international study published in National Science Review on small and medium emerging emitters

A new research titled 'Global mitigation efforts cannot neglect emerging emitters' led by Professor Dabo Guan from The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction (BSSC) UCL, his international research team of Carbon Emission Accounts and Datasets for Emerging Economies and Tsinghua University, has revealed that global mitigation efforts to avoid climate change cannot neglect small and medium emerging emitters.

According to the research published in the National Science Review, international efforts to avoid dangerous climate change by reaching the global 1.5°C target is unlikely to be achieved in ‘emerging emitter’ countries without substantial further decreases in the costs of non-emitting energy deployment or economic support and low-carbon technology transfer from historically high-emitting countries.

The researchers analysed the trends and drivers of emissions in each of the 59 countries where emissions from 2010 to 2018 grew faster than the global average (excluding China and India). They also projected their emissions under a range of longer-term energy scenarios, and estimated the costs of decarbonization pathways.

The findings showed that total emissions from these ‘emerging emitters’ reach as much as 7.5 Gt CO2/year in the baseline 2.5° scenario— substantially greater than the emissions from these regions in previously published scenarios that would limit warming to 2°C even 1.5°C.

Such unanticipated emissions would in turn require non-emitting energy deployment from all sectors within these emerging emitters, and faster and deeper reductions in emissions from other countries to meet international climate goals.

Moreover, the annual costs of keeping emissions at the low level are in many cases 0.2%-4.1% of countries’ GDP, pointing to potential trade-offs with poverty reduction goals and/or the need for economic support and low-carbon technology transfer from historically high-emitting countries.

The researchers conclude that these results highlight the critical importance of ramping up mitigation efforts in countries that to this point have been largely ignored.

Professor Dabo Guan said: “Global carbon space for limiting 1.5°C is exhausting while we need to give sufficient consideration of global equality of socioeconomic developments. Developed countries must work towards achieving negative emissions as soon as possible in order to accommodate the space to be required by emerging emitting economies”.

“China can potentially play a bridging role in promoting North-South and South-South collaborations in knowledge transfers and technological spillovers to help the emerging emitters to lower their emission intensities, decelerate their emission growth trends, and eventually reduce emission space required for their economic growth.”

Can Cui, the lead author of the study, and PhD student at Tsinghua University said: “The emerging emitters such as Myanmar, Laos, Zambia and Ethiopia, are on their way to industrialisations, and they seem to have neither the technological, nor financial capacity to achieve low carbon developments, which requires support from the developed countries and global major economies for capacity buildings for all related fields.”

Dr Jing Meng, one of the authors and an Associate Professor at The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London said: “The rapid decline of costs in variable renewable energy provides opportunities for emerging economies’ low carbon transition. More public and private financial support are needed to be mobilised to speed up their transition.”

This international study involved researchers from the UK, China, Austria, and the US. It was supported by UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. Professor Dabo Guan is the co-ordinator of the research and a Professor in Climate Change Economics and the Low Carbon Transition at The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London. He is also the Chair of Climate Change Economics at Tsinghua University.
2. For more information or to arrange an interview with Professor Dabo Guan and Dr Jing Meng, please email bssc.comms@ucl.ac.uk.
3. A copy of the paper ‘Global mitigation efforts cannot neglect emerging emitters’ is available here.