Major grant awarded to develop tools for assessing climate ambition

– As international negotiation and countries' implementations are slowing down, climate litigation and voluntary initiatives from non-state actors play an increasing role in curbing global emissions. Global climate goals need to be translated into ambitious targets and fairness language into concrete international support, says project leader Yann Robiou du Pont.  

Since the adoption of the Paris agreement in 2015, climate targets have been central in global efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Countries, cities and companies are setting increasingly ambitious pledges, yet these remain greatly insufficient, leading the world to a 2.7°C warming. 

However, there is no shared way to determine how much different actors (countries, cities, or companies) should reduce their emissions, or whether their targets are fair and sufficient. 

The project, Paris Ambition, aims to provide climate ambition assessment tools that are clearly related to the roles and needs of key actors in global climate governance. The project has a total budget of 24 million NOK.  

A growing need for assessment 

The project is not only relevant for policymakers and companies assessing their own targets, but also for observers and courts. Courts and observers are more frequently asked to evaluate whether climate targets are sufficient or credible.  

Parallel to his academic work, Yann has helped Indigenous groups, cities and companies with assessing the ambition of various pledges. He has also been asked by NGOs to provide expert resports in court cases against countries (including Norway) and companies such as TotalEnergies.  

Through this work he realised that there was a gap in the knowledge on climate pledges, as he explains:  

– As I provided expert reports to summarise the available science, I understood that we need to develop scientifically robust and actionable tools that better capture their prerogatives, says Yann. 

To address this need, the project focuses on producing actionable knowledge. At CET, we define this as knowledge that informs policy and practice.   

Actionable knowledge for transformation 

Yann has been a guest researcher at the Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET) the past year and developed the project proposal with support from CET. Paris Ambition made it to the second round of the ERC starting grant and was placed on the reserve list for funding.  

The proposal was invited to be part of the Research Council of Norway’s scheme for groundbreaking research where they fund qualified ERC applications. The project is now funded and will be led from CET, with Yann as the project leader.  

CET Director Håvard Haarstad says the project is at the heart of what CET research is about: 

– Yann’s project looks at a critical question, how do we make climate change mitigation fair and equitable? By developing principles and methods for figuring this out, the project makes a very actionable contribution to climate change research. It fits really well into CET’s aim to help the world deal with climate change by taking justice into account. We also look forward to Yann developing a team within CET to advance this agenda.