Dubai, Dec. 8, (dpa/GNA) – The world is no closer to reaching the climate goals outlined in the 2015 Paris agreement, despite a boom in renewable energy, environmental organizations reported on Friday.
Until there is a drastic decline in fossil fuel use, global emissions cannot be halved by 2030 as aimed for, the NGOs Germanwatch and NewClimate Institute report.
In their yearly assessment, the organizations reviewed the climate policies of 63 countries as well as the European Union, together responsible for more than 90% of global emissions.
“For the first time, not a single country ranks ‘high’ in the category climate policy,” said co-author Niklas Höhne of the NewClimate Institute.
Even Denmark, which leads the rankings, appears to be further away from the target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as agreed upon during the 2015 UN Climate Conference in Paris.
Brazil and Vietnam have shown the most progress, while Italy and Britain are falling behind. Major polluters China and the United States continued to perform poorly.
Brazil saw significant improvement, catapulting from 38th to 23rd place year-on-year after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office.
Unsurprisingly, oil producing countries, including the host of the COP28 climate conference the United Arab Emirates, rank at the bottom.
Höhne appealed to countries to “switch to emergency mode.”
“Emissions must be almost halved worldwide by 2030 in order to avoid an escalation of the climate crisis,” he said.
Jan Burck, one of the study’s authors, emphasized that the COP28 conference plays a “crucial role” in getting countries to multiply their climate efforts. He called for a tripling of renewable energy capacity, a doubling of energy efficiency and a drastic reduction of coal, oil and gas before 2030.
The EU as a confederation of states received a “good” rating, mainly due to its package of measures to reduce greenhouse gases by 55% by 2030, the authors write – though pointing out that the bloc’s climate goals are not ambitious enough.
Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, improved its rating slightly, rising to 14th place. This is mostly due to its expansion of renewable energies, the authors write.
“The reasons for the rather mediocre rating of Germany’s national climate policy lie primarily in a transport policy that is too weak in terms of climate policy, the weakening of the Climate Protection Act and an ultimately watered-down heating law,” said co-author Jan Burck.
Burck pointed to the “often conflicting climate policy ambitions” of the three parties of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left coalition government as a main problem.