Simon Black, Ian W.H. Parry, and Karlygash Zhunussova
Urgent action to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is needed now. Early next year, all countries will set new emissions targets for 2035 while revising their 2030 targets. Global GHGs must be cut by 25 and 50 percent below 2019 levels by 2030 to limit global warming to 2°C and 1.5°C respectively. But current targets would only cut emissions by 12 percent, meaning global ambition needs to be doubled to quadrupled. Further delay will lead to an ‘emissions cliff edge’, implying implausible cuts in GHGs and putting put 1.5°C beyond reach. This Note provides IMF staff’s annual assessment of global climate mitigation policy. It illustrates options for equitably aligning country targets with the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals. It also provides guidance on modelling needed to set emissions targets and quantify climate mitigation policy impacts.
Simon Black, Ian W.H. Parry, Sunalika Singh, and Nate Vernon-Lin
The need to decarbonize international aviation and maritime has long been overlooked. The two sectors account for a small but rapidly growing share of global CO2 emissions, and could rise to as much as 15 to 40 percent by 2040. Pricing these emissions could help global climate policy in two ways. First, it could accelerate technological development while incentivizing efficiency, kick-starting the sectors’ transition to net zero while addressing the sectors’ hitherto favorable tax treatment. Second, pricing could raise up to $200 billion a year in revenues by 2035, which could be allocated to climate finance or other uses. There are significant political obstacles, however, notably reaching consensus on revenue allocation and managing price impacts, which are substantive for flight tickets but less so for shipped goods. Pricing variants, like ‘fee and rebate’ schemes (feebates), have lower price impacts but raise fewer revenues. This paper discusses these policies, using a new model to quantify impacts on fuel use, emissions, revenues, production and economic costs, and on vulnerable states.