Steps Towards Carbon Neutrality

New Policy Paper Gives an Overview of Strategies

October 2017 - In the Paris Agreement, the governments of the world have agreed to achieve climate neutrality in the second half of this century. More precisely, in Art. 4.1 Parties agreed to “achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases“.

While the collective as well as the majority of efforts by individual countries fall short of em barking on a pathway toward that end, an in creasing number of actors – countries, sub national entities, as well as corporations – have stepped up their efforts and set themselves carbon neutrality goals.

This Policy Brief portrays the commitments of Costa Rica, Norway, Sweden, as well as the City of Melbourne in Australia and Microsoft. All cases have set themselves ambitious neutrality goals and have implemented measures to achieve them. However, none of the cases will be able to achieve climate neutrality on their own, at least not in the short run. Remaining emissions will be compensated using carbon credits either from domestic offset schemes (Costa Rica) or from international schemes.

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