ENABLING AND LEVERAGING CLIMATE ACTION TOWARDS NET-ZERO EMISSIONS

To implement the Paris Agreement's goals, greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced to net-zero around 2050. However, current policies are still insufficient to reach this target and net-zero promises by countries are generally lacking concrete roadmaps how to reach them. ELEVATE aims to create a robust scientific understanding required to strengthen NDCs and current climate policies towards reaching net-zero emissions. For this, ELEVATE brings together a unique multidisciplinary consortium of leading international and national modelling teams, climate policy experts and social scientists. The consortium aims to interact directly with policymakers to define information gaps and attractive policies, thus enhancing usability of the knowledge base and stimulating mutual learning. Based on this, the consortium will systematically assess NDCs and policies at the global and national levels to identify current progress and good practice policies. Subsequently, ELEVATE will look into a range of critical enabling factors related to sectoral action, international climate policy and the relationship with justice and sustainable development that can be leveraged to strengthen action. This allows a new generation of global and national mitigation scenarios, exploring the possibility of strengthening climate policies in countries worldwide and support net-zero goals. We assess the impact of different ways to formulate net-zero goals and the impact of climate uncertainty. Outcomes include detailed pathways and milestones on how policies can be strengthened to achieving net-zero goals. ELEVATE goes significantly beyond the state-of-the-art by 1) the inclusion of social sciences in all aspects of the analysis providing significantly improved insights into issues related to implementation and feasibility, 2) the detailed focus on sectoral action, 3) the stakeholder interaction and 4) the direct collaboration between the global and national teams on net-zero emission scenarios.