Marion Vieweg (2016)
The Paris Agreement is a milestone in international climate diplomacy. The global community agreed to “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”, and to a new architecture with mitigation commitments from all Parties. At the same time, coal expansion seems to continue unabated, and some of the countries putting forward their climate commitments under the UNFCCC are planning and constructing new coal-fired power generation capacity at large scale (Global Coal Plant Tracker, 2016). This paper looks at how these coal plans and related national energy strategies link to the submitted INDCs, and analyses the implications for achieving stated commitments.
