The Possibility and Improvement Directions of Achieving the Paris Agreement Goals from the Perspective of Climate Policy

Zhihao Huang, Yujun Huang and Shuaishuai Zhang ()
Additional contact information
Zhihao Huang: School of Data Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
Yujun Huang: School of Data Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
Shuaishuai Zhang: Zhongtai Securities Co., Ltd., Shanghai 200122, China

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 10, 1-19

Abstract: Currently, climate change and global warming have significantly impacted human life. In the context of sustainable development, achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement is both urgent and complex. This paper presents a comprehensive review of climate policies worldwide. Based on the global comprehensive climate policy database that we constructed and using global panel data from 1990 to 2019, we predicted the emission reduction due to climate policies using trend and fixed-effects models to identify areas for improvement. The research findings indicate that there is a considerable gap between current climate policies and the targets set by the Paris Agreement, both in terms of quantity and effectiveness. Economic growth and primary energy consumption contribute to increased greenhouse gas emissions, while increasing the proportion of renewable energy in electricity generation and implementing climate policies have the effect of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Relying solely on increasing the quantity or effectiveness of policies would require an increase of 15–30 times the levels seen before 2019 to achieve the 2 °C warming target of the Paris Agreement. However, simultaneously increasing the number of policy implementations and enhancing their effectiveness would only require about a fourfold increase from the levels seen before 2019. Additionally, the results of the study on national heterogeneity demonstrate significant differences in policy effectiveness among countries, indicating substantial potential for emission reduction. Furthermore, the analysis of policy legal enforceability shows that hard law policies outperform soft law policies, suggesting that increasing the implementation of hard law policies can more effectively reduce emissions.

Keywords: climate policy; Paris Agreement; emission reduction scenarios; policy effect; policy density (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/10/4212/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/10/4212/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:10:p:4212-:d:1396510

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().