Paris Agreement requires substantial, broad, and sustained policy efforts beyond COVID-19 public stimulus packages

Katsumasa Tanaka (1, 2, 3) , Christian Azar (4) , Olivier Boucher (3) , Philippe Ciais (1, 3) , Yann Gaucher (1, 3) , Daniel Johansson (4)

1 LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette]
2 NIES - National Institute for Environmental Studies
3 IPSL (FR_636) - Institut Pierre-Simon-Laplace
4 Chalmers University of Technology [Gothenburg, Sweden]

It has been claimed that COVID-19 public stimulus packages could be sufficient to meet the short-term energy investment needs to leverage a shift toward a pathway consistent with the 1.5 °C target of the Paris Agreement. Here, we provide complementary perspectives to reiterate that substantial, broad, and sustained policy efforts beyond stimulus packages will be needed for achieving the Paris Agreement long-term targets. Low-carbon investments will need to scale up and persist over the next several decades following short-term stimulus packages. The required total energy investments in the real world can be larger than the currently available estimates from integrated assessment models (IAMs). Existing databases from IAMs are not sufficient for analyzing the effect of public spending on emission reduction. To inform what role COVID-19 stimulus packages and public investments may play for reaching the Paris Agreement targets, explicit modelling of such policies is required.

Mots clés: COVID-19; Green stimulus packages; Energy investment; Paris Agreement; Integrated assessment models; Carbon pricing

Domaines: Océan, Atmosphère; Interfaces continentales, environnement

Katsumasa Tanaka, Christian Azar, Olivier Boucher, Philippe Ciais, Yann Gaucher, et al.. Paris Agreement requires substantial, broad, and sustained policy efforts beyond COVID-19 public stimulus packages. Climatic Change, 2022, 172 (1-2), pp.1. ⟨10.1007/s10584-022-03355-6⟩. ⟨hal-03665719⟩