At the two-week climate change summit participated in by 195 countries in Paris early this December, President BS Aquino III led a forum by countries most affected by global warming. The group called on the world’s major polluters to enable the world to adapt to and mitigate the impact of climate change.
The gesture was nice for photo op and press release purposes.
The truth is that even the Philippines itself cannot meet its own greenhouse gas reduction targets without putting in place aggressive policies. Without those policies, the Philippines cannot contribute to limiting global warming to below 2°C—the threshold committed to by all nations at the Paris summit.
The science-based Climate Action Tracker considers the Philippines’ commitments as “the least ambitious”—trabahong tamad, to use our language. CAT is an NGO of scientists that tracks emission reduction commitments of countries.
Even “the least ambitious targets” cannot possibly be met by 2025 because the Philippines has in the pipeline coal plants with aggregate capacity of 10 gigawatts, warns CAT.
Fossil fuels like crude oil and coal are the biggest contributors to pollution which in turn trigger global warming.
Philippine projections indicate a growth in electricity demand of 4.2 percent per year between 2010 and 2030 and a growth in renewable electricity generation of only 1 percent over the same period.
The World Bank has made projections for transport and electricity production showing steeper growth in emissions than these targets. The higher transport and emissions from electricity are included in the maximum range of the current policy projections by the Philippines.
Emissions growth in the Philippines will come mainly from transport and coal-fired electricity generation.
Without the renewable energy target and energy efficiency targets emissions under current Philippine policies (excluding land use, land use change and forestry or LULUCF), emissions are expected to increase by up to 250 MtCO2e in 2020 and 350 MtCO2e in 2030, an increase of 63 percent and 129 percent, respectively, from the GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions of 153 MtCO2e in 2010, excluding LULUCF.
If all coal power plants—more than 10 GW—that were announced this year are constructed, total emissions will hit the high end of the Philippines’ current policy projections. The new coal plants alone could result in about 60 MtCO2 of additional emissions by 2025.
MtCO3 is million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. This measure can aggregate different green house gases into a single measure, using global warming potentials. One unit of carbon is equivalent to 3.664 units of carbon dioxide.
The Philippines’ “National Renewable Energy Program” sets out a tripling of renewable energy capacity by 2030 along with a share of 40 percent of electricity production from renewables. Also, “The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Roadmap” mandates energy savings equivalent to 10 percent across energy demand sectors in 2030. These, however, are just plans. They are not firm policies. They require political will to enforce.
If the Philippines fully implements its current policies and proposed targets, most notably the tripling in renewable power capacity by 2030, compared to 2010, and achieves its 10-percent energy efficiency target, total GHG emissions in 2020 and 2030, CAT estimates, could increase to approximately 190 and 230 MtCO2e, respectively.
This would be a reduction of 11 percent in 2020 and 25 percent in 2030 compared to the lower end of CAT’s current policy projections for the Philippines.
On Oct. 1, 2015, the Philippines submitted its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution, including a conditional greenhouse gas reduction target of 70 percent below business as usual levels by 2030.
The INDC states that the target is conditional on “the extent of financial resources, including technology development and transfer, and capacity building, that will be made available to the Philippines.” The target covers all emissions from all sectors, including land use, land use change and forestry.
When assuming that industrial, energy and agricultural emissions (emissions excluding LULUCF), were also to be reduced by 70 percent below BAU, the Climate Action Tracker, estimates that this could, at best, result in emissions excluding LULUCF reverting to 1990 levels.
If the target were (partly) unconditional, and directed at energy, industrial and agricultural emissions we would rate it “sufficient,” says CAT.
However, the Philippines has not put this forward and, given the large uncertainty around how much mitigation it plans for LULUCF emissions and how much emissions excluding LULUCF, CAT has given the Philippines the lower rate of “medium.”
The “medium” rating indicates that the Philippines’ climate commitments are at the least ambitious end of what would be a fair contribution. This means it is not consistent with limiting warming to below 2°C unless other countries make much deeper reductions and comparably greater effort.
A (partly) unconditional reduction target, also specified for emissions excluding LULUCF, could therefore be proposed, along with providing the used BAU, to increase the transparency of the INDC.
CAT says this could move the Philippines to a “sufficient rating,” meaning climate plans are at the most ambitious end of its fair contribution. This means it would be consistent with limiting warming to below 2°C without requiring other countries to make much deeper reductions and comparably greater effort, CAT points out.
Meanwhile, from the perspective of the Climate Action Tracker, the December Paris Agreement will positively influence the world’s ability to limit the adverse effects of climate change.
For the first time, CAT notes, an international climate agreement has, at its core, a goal to not just hold warming below 2°C, but critically specifies this goal as holding warming well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
In addition, and as another first, this agreement looks beyond emissions reductions over the near term, and specifies that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and removals have to “balance” in the second half of the century.
CAT interprets the latter as global anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions needing to reach zero, and notes that IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) scenarios assessed in the UNEP emissions gap reports show that this emissions objective fits with the temperature limits, if this is achieved by 2060-2080.
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