A new study released on Wednesday revealed that recent climate policy announcements are growing increasingly ambitious and that the majority of them aim for an increase in global temperatures of no more than 1.8 degrees Celsius.
The Inevitable Policy Response (IPR), which describes itself as a climate transition forecasting consortium, has been monitoring public and private sector climate plans since a United Nations climate summit in November 2021 and weighs the announcements based on their legitimacy and ambition.
The latest three-month period from October to January was the most ambitious yet, IPR said, helped by a wave of green subsidies in the United States Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the European Union’s own plans to boost cleaner energy sources.
Those initiatives have provided a “new catalyst for climate action”, IPR said, as the major economies vie with China to lead on clean energy.
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However, IPR’s tracker shows that most policies do not appear aligned with limiting a rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The United Nations says breaching risks unleashing far more severe effects of climate change.
IPR said of the 117 global policy announcements tracked in the latest quarter, 89 had sufficient credibility to be included in its tracker, with 68 supporting or confirming a 1.8 degrees C temperature rise forecast, 20 indicating increased ambition and two a decrease.
Since it began tracking policies in late 2021, the IPR has analysed 331 policy announcements, with 162 of them supporting confirming IPR forecasts of a 1.8 degrees C outcome.
Story was adapted from Reuters.
