Not overshooting 1.5 degrees of warming could bring long term economic gains

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-11-30 03:00

Australia; International; VIC

The Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, but most pathways to get us there involve initially overshooting that target, then later clawing back to 1.5 degrees with net-negative emissions. Now Australian and international experts have found that not overshooting this target would have higher short term costs, but these are fully compensated by higher long term economic gains. The researchers modelled a range of pathways for reaching these temperature targets with limited overshoot. They say that even without net-negative emissions, CO2 removal is still important for accelerating near-term reductions and for providing a way to offset the residual emissions in sectors that are hard to abate.

Journal/
conference: Nature Climate Change

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The University of Melbourne, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria

Funder: S. Fujimori, T.H., J.T. and K.O. are supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (JPMEERF20202002, JPMEERF20211001) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan. S. Fujimori and T.H are further supported by the Sumitomo Foundation. K.R., C.B., D.H., J.R., V.B., A.C., A.D., L.D., S. Frank, O.F., M.H., V.K., G.L., L.P., R.S., Z.V., K.F., M.G., F.H., P.K., E.K., A.P., P.R.R.R., G.Ü., B.R., J.T., M.T., D.V. and B.Z. received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 821471 (ENGAGE).

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