Ilaria Perissi, Sara Falsini and Ugo Bardi, MEDEAS partners from the National Interuniversity Consortium of Materials Science and Technology (INSTM) in collaboration with Davide Natalini, Michael Green and Aled Jones, MEDEAS partners from the Global Sustainability Institute (GSI) at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and Jordi Solé Ollé, MEDEAS coordinator from the Institut of Marine Sciences - Spanish National Research Council (ICM-CSIC), have just published a scientific article in Sustainability, entitled: "Potential European Emissions Trajectories within the Global Carbon Budget".
The Paris Agreement, ratified in 2015, pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within a Global Carbon Budget that limits the global temperature increase to less than 2 °C. With the Roadmap 2050 mitigation measures, the European Union has a target to reduce emissions by 80% of their 1990 value by 2050 but without giving an estimation or a maximum ceiling for the total amount of cumulative greenhouse gases emissions over that period. Thus, the impact of the EU regulations on global warming remains unestimated. The aim and the novelty of this study are to develop a set of potential European emissions trajectories, within the Global Carbon Budget and at the same time satisfying the Roadmap 2050 goals. The result of the study highlights the urgency to reinforce mitigation measures for Europe as soon as possible because any delay in policy implementation risks the Roadmap 2050 mitigation package being insufficient to achieve the objectives of the Paris treaty.
The complete article can be found here.