Low Carbon Economy Index

Zwei von PwC entwickelte Indizes zeigen auf, welche Fortschritte die G20-Staaten seit dem Jahr 2000 bei der Absenkung ihrer Treibhausgasemissionen gemacht haben ("Low Carbon Achievement Index") und wie weit die Wegstrecke bis zu einem nachhaltigen Emissionsniveau noch ist ("Low Carbon Challenge Index"). Während Deutschland im Achievement-Index besser abschneidet als die meisten anderen Staaten, liegt es im Challenge-Index zurück.

Carbon budget: PwC's model estimates that there is a need to stay within a global carbon budget for the period from 2000 to 2050 of just under 1.300 GtCO2, to have a fair chance of limiting global warming to 2oC.

Performance off track: The report reveals a widening gap between this budget and actual carbon emissions. For 2000-2008, the cumulative global budget overshoot, or "carbon debt", is estimated at around 13 GtCO2 (roughly equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of China and the US combined in 2008). Global carbon emissions in 2008 were already around ten percent above levels implied by these estimated annual budgets. Even the EU is seven percent off track.

Carbon achievement gap: The world will already have exceeded its estimated global carbon budget for the first half of this century by 2034, 16 years ahead of schedule, at current rates of carbon intensity improvement.

Carbon challenge: If the world had started in 2000, it would have needed to decarbonise at around two percent a year up to 2008 according to these budgets. But the global rate of carbon intensity reduction actually achieved up to 2008 was only around 0,8 percent. The result is that the world now has to decarbonise at a rate of 3.5 percent a year between 2008 and 2020 to get back on track -more than four times faster than the rate achieved since 2000 at the global level.This is greater than the levels of improvement in carbon intensity seen in the 1990's in the UK (with its "dash for gas") and in Germany (after reunification). The PwC Low Carbon Challenge index indicates that the G20 now needs to cut its carbon intensity levels by around 35 percent by 2020, and around 85 percent by 2050.

Key players: China, the US, the EU and India together account for around 63 percent of the estimated cumulative carbon budget for 2000-50. These "Big 4" economies will therefore be critical to agreeing and implementing any global climate change deal at Copenhagen and beyond.

Bibliographische Daten

Low Carbon Economy Index
December 2009

Autoren

PricewaterhouseCoopers

Bibliographie/Quelle

Dezember 2009
66 S.