Tracking country-level mitigation progress using NGHGI-consistent carbon budgets.
other · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41688452.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-69078-9 and PMC identifier 12905252.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The remaining carbon budget (RCB) of countries provides a benchmark for evaluating national mitigation efforts and was central to a recent European Court of Human Rights' ruling. However, estimates of national RCBs are inconsistent with CO<sub>2</sub> accounting in national greenhouse gas inventories (NGHGIs). Here, we align RCBs with NGHGI accounting standards. For 2024, NGHGI alignment reduces the 1.5 °C (50%) global RCB by ~100 GtCO<sub>2</sub> ( ≈ 50%) and the 2 °C (66%) RCB by ~200 GtCO<sub>2</sub> ( ≈ 20%). Thus, we estimate the 1.5 °C (50%) NGHGI-consistent global RCB to be depleted by 2027. We provide NGHGI-consistent national RCBs for common allocation methods and most countries. Following Paris Agreement equity principles, we find that by 2025, 64-85 countries could have exceeded their fair-share RCB for 1.5 °C (50%). While national RCBs depend on normative choices and are unlikely to directly drive negotiations, our framework enables more methodologically robust RCB calculations to track country-level mitigation progress.