Emissions Gap Report 2022
The Closing Window
This report is the 13th edition of an annual series that tracks where greenhouse gas emissions are predicted to be in 2030 and where they should be to avert the worst impacts of climate change.
Throughout 2022 climate change impacts intensified.
Catastrophic floods put much of Pakistan under water, affecting over 30 million people.
A multiyear drought is threatening wide-scale famine in the Horn of Africa.
Heatwaves across the northern hemisphere caused wildfires and huge disruption.
This is happening at only 1.1°C of global warming above pre-industrial temperatures.
The impacts will intensify and spread with every fraction of a degree increase.
The world must urgently cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window finds that the world is far off track to limiting global warming to 1.5°C, the most-ambitious target set out by the Paris Agreement.
The emissions gap is the difference between where GHGs should be in 2030 to meet the Paris goals and where they are projected to be.
This report finds that only an urgent system-wide transformation can close the gap and avoid an accelerating climate disaster. The report demonstrates how to deliver sustainable transformation through action in the electricity supply, industry, transport and buildings sectors, and the food and financial systems.
Progress since 2021
At the United Nations Climate Conference in November 2021 – known as COP 26 – nations signed up to the Glasgow Climate Pact.
This statement called for all nations to strengthen their Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, as climate commitments under the Paris Agreement are known.
Despite progress since 2021, the report finds that nations have collectively failed to significantly narrow the projected 2030 emissions gap.
New and updated NDCs submitted since COP26 take less than 1 per cent off projected 2030 emissions.
New and updated NDCs submitted since COP26 take less than one per cent off projected 2030 emissions.
This is woefully inadequate.
Temperature projections
The lack of progress in curbing emissions leaves the world on a path towards a temperature rise far above the Paris Agreement goal of well below 2°C and preferably 1.5°C.
Implementation of all NDCs, alongside additional net-zero commitments made for 2050, could limit temperature rise to 1.8°C.
But this scenario is not currently considered credible.
The size of the cuts needed by 2030
To get on track to meet the Paris Agreement Goals, the world needs to reduce GHGs by unprecedented levels over the next eight years. Emissions must continue to decline rapidly after 2030 to avoid exhausting the remaining atmospheric carbon budget.
Such massive cuts require a large-scale, rapid and systemic transformation across the globe.
The report explores the required actions in the electricity supply, industry, transport and buildings sectors, and the food and financial systems that would back these changes.
Transformations in key sectors
The transformation towards zero GHGs in key sectors is underway but needs to move much faster.
Electricity supply is most advanced, as the costs of renewable electricity for solar and wind have fallen, but obstacles still exist – including ensuring an equitable transition and universal energy access.
The buildings sector needs to reduce excess floor area; reduce the energy consumed for heating, lighting and appliances; switch to renewable-powered grid electricity; and reduce the emissions from materials such as steel, cement and concrete.
For industry, the most important actions are the full decarbonization of processes by using electricity, green hydrogen and carbon management for heat sources and feedstock, reducing waste, and increasing the reuse and recycling of materials.
Critical transport actions include finalizing the shift to zero-carbon vehicles, prioritizing sustainable and well-designed public transport networks, and promoting walking and cycling infrastructure.
Key actions to advance the transformation include:
- Avoid locking-in new fossil fuel-intensive infrastructure, such as new coal plants.
- Further advance zero-carbon technologies, market structures and planning for a just transformation.
- Apply zero-emission technology and behavioural changes to sustain emission reductions.
Food systems
Food systems currently account for one-third of all GHGs.
These emissions will almost double by 2050 if current practices remain in place as populations and incomes grow.
However, transformation in four areas can reduce 2050 emissions to around a third of current levels:
- Change the demand side of diets by eating a more varied, nutritious diet and cutting out food waste.
- Protect natural ecosystems such as forests and peatlands that are being converted for agriculture.
- Improve food production at the farm level by increasing the efficiency of inputs such as water and energy and reducing methane emissions from cattle.
- Decarbonize food supply chains by moving to clean transport, using renewable energy in industrial processes, promoting locally sourced food and eliminating excessive packaging.
Governments can facilitate the transformation by reforming subsidies and tax schemes.
The private sector can reduce food loss and waste, use renewable energy and develop novel foods with lower carbon footprints. One example is the plant-based meat market, which in 2021 generated US$5 billion in sales and is projected to reach US$86 billion by 2030.
Citizens can alter their food habits to ensure they are more environmentally sustainable and have a smaller carbon footprint, such as shifting to more plant-based diets that demand less water for cropland and reduce deforestation.
Financial systems
A global transformation to a low-carbon economy is expected to require investments of at least US$4-6 trillion a year.
Investments must move away from fossil fuels and practices that destroy nature to support the vital transformations.
Delivering such investment will require a complete rethink of financial systems, structures and processes.
Governments, central banks, commercial banks, institutional investors and other financial actors should implement six approaches to financial sector reform:
- Make financial markets more efficient, including through taxonomies and transparency.
- Introduce carbon pricing, such as taxes or cap-and-trade systems.
- Nudge financial behaviour through public policy interventions, taxes, spending and regulations.
- Create markets for low-carbon technology through shifting financial flows, stimulating innovation and helping to set standards.
- Mobilize central banks: more concrete action on regulations is urgently needed.
- Set up climate "clubs" of cooperating countries, cross-border finance initiatives and just transformation partnerships, which can alter policy norms and change the course of finance through credible financial commitment devices, such as sovereign guarantees.
Delivering such a transformation over the next eight years will not be easy. It may not even be possible.
But the world must try.
Every fraction of a degree matters
to vulnerable communities, endangered species and ecosystems, and people’s livelihoods.
Transforming systems will set up a low-carbon future, bringing down temperature overshoots and delivering many other social and environmental benefits, like clean air, green jobs and universal energy access.
Other crises, such as the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis, cannot distract the world from the task.
Such crises should be viewed as opportunities to invest in lasting change.
Only a complete transformation of the world’s economies and societies can deliver a low-carbon and prosperous future for people and planet.