MARRAKESH, Morocco — The United States can by 2050 decrease its carbon emissions 80 percent below 2005 levels, according to the U.S. Mid-Century Strategy for Deep Decarbonization (MCS) submitted Wednesday to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The submission of national mid-century strategies is called for, but not required, by the Paris Agreement on climate change. The accord seeks to keep global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius and requires member nations – at 110 as of Thursday — to submit regular short-term climate action plans, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
The U.S. submitted its NDC shortly after formally joining the agreement in September. The document is identical to an earlier version submitted to the UNFCCC before the adoption of the agreement. In the short term, the U.S. has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
Unlike the NDC, which is based on existing executive authority and charts a largely certain path forward, the MCS is more of an analysis of the several paths the nation could follow to reach the 80 percent goal. “It’s not a policy prescription. It’s not a set of specific recommendations or a blueprint for any future administration,” Brian Deese, senior adviser to the president on climate change, said Wednesday in announcing the strategy here at the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC. “It’s also not an attempt to predict with precision what the world is going to look like in 2050 given the uncertainties that exist out there.”
“The purpose of the MCS analysis is not to predict near-term policymaking, model the future U.S. energy and land sectors with precision, or encompass the full range of possible low-GHG pathways, but rather to describe key opportunities and challenges associated with our illustrative pathways, and highlight findings that are robust across scenarios,” the analysis says.
The validly of the strategy in light of the recent election of vocal climate change sceptic Donald Trump drew questions. “Obviously the open question that Brian is not going to, and should not, answer is will this be picked up by the next administration, and if so how,” Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told GHG Daily on the sidelines of the event. “There’s no signs of that yet, but I think this will be very useful for states and regions in the U.S. that are doing their own planning.”
The strategy is built on trends that in the near term are likely to persist, such as an ongoing shift away from coal-fired energy generation. “I think this is particularly important given the uncertainty that I know many of you are thinking about in terms of future policy in the United States and the transition to a new administration,” Deese said. “The pathways that we project are that the market dynamics that are underpinning this trend are very likely to continue in the near and medium term.”
The MCS breaks down the path to deep decarbonization into three key action areas: transitioning to a low-carbon energy system; sequestering carbon through forests, soils, and CO2 removal technologies; and reducing non-CO2 emissions.
To transition the nation to a low-carbon energy system, the MCS suggests cutting energy waste through energy efficiency improvements and replacing nearly all fossil fuel electricity production by 2050 with low-carbon technologies, such as renewables, nuclear, and carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). The MCS also calls for shifting the transportation, building, and industrial sectors to clean electricity.
Much of the carbon sequestration portion of the report looks to biological sequestration through forests and soil. CO2 removal technologies are mentioned, but the MCS warns against using such systems as a crutch. “The development of CO2 removal technologies is not a justification to continue emitting freely. They represent a suite of strategies that complement rather than substitute for emissions reductions. Even with extensive RD&D, we expect to have many years of cheaper emissions reduction opportunities to exploit in the energy and land sectors before needing to mobilize these technologies at scale,” the MCS says.
Finally, the strategy says, the nation must ramp up efforts to reduce methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases. “The MCS envisions enhanced actions to further drive down non-CO2 emissions. This includes new and more stringent standards and incentives to reduce methane from oil and gas production and from landfills,” the MCS says.
