In this month's "In Depth" we interview Jordi Solé, researcher in the Physical and Technological Oceanography group at the ICM-CSIC and member of the Committee of Experts on Climate Change of Catalonia, who have just publicly presented the carbon budget proposal they recently submitted to the Catalan government.
On April 24, the Committee of Experts on Climate Change (CECC) of Catalonia published the first carbon budget proposal for Catalonia at an open event at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Barcelona. This technical document defines the decarbonization path for Catalonia in accordance with its 2017 Climate Change Law. One of the seven members of the CECC is Jordi Solé Ollé, a researcher in the Department of Physical and Technological Oceanography at the Barcelona Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC). Solé holds a PhD in Applied Physics from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, is an associate researcher at the Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), and has coordinated the European MEDEAS project for modeling the energy transition in Europe. The resulting model, pymedeas2, was adapted to the Catalan energy system to project decarbonization scenarios in Catalonia through the PYMEDEASCAT project. It is the model that the CECC has used to project decarbonization paths by strategic sectors and define carbon budgets. Once approved, Catalonia will be the first Spainsh region with a carbon budget.
1. Who is responsible for finalizing Catalonia’s carbon budget?
The CECC is the advisory board the Catalan Parliament appointed in compliance with the Catalan Climate Change Law. Its main function is to design the carbon budget and advise both the Parliament and the Government. However, the latter is the one that is studying the report since January to submit a final proposal to the Parliament, after passing through the Sectoral Roundtable on Climate Change, which represents the social, economic, and environmental sectors. Therefore, is the Parliament who will approve the final version of this budget, although the final date has not been determined yet and depends largely on the Government, as it has to consult with all political parties in the Parliament to ensure the approval of its final proposal.
2. According to 2017 Climate Change Catalan Law, the budget should be in force since December 31 of 2020. What is the reason of the delay?
The CECC wasn't fully formed until January 2023, but as soon as the last of us joined, we started to work on it. We are pleased to have finally been able to publish the report with our proposal for the five-year periods 2021-2025, 2026-2030 and 2031-2035, even though the first is about to end and is a sum of the observed data up to 2022, plus the projections up to 2025. Therefore, along with the numbers of the gross and net estimated emissions for each period, the document shows the projection of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction rates for 2022, in addition to those for 1990, which is the year of reference in all the official reports.
3. How will the carbon budget be integrated into the climate change initiatives that already existed in Catalonia?
The Catalan Office for Climate Change (OCCC), which advises the government, is already monitoring emissions and has projected decarbonization paths for Catalonia. However, the carbon budget is the mechanism established by the Catalan Climate Change Law to integrate decarbonization goals into sectoral policies. In other words, we will use them to define a roadmap with specific annual targets for reducing GHG emissions, and also to propose measures that should be implemented to achieve them. In this way, we will be complying with the Catalan decarbonization plan defined in the 2050 Energy Outlook (PROENCAT 2050) developed by the Catalan Energy Institute (ICAEN) in 2023, and also with the European "Fit for 55" goal of achieving a 55% reduction in emissions compared to the pre-industrial era by 2030, which is also contemplated in the Spanish law to which we must adhere.
4. What is the main premise of the CECC’s report?
We propose starting significant efforts to reduce GHG emissions as soon as possible. Our proposal is ambitious because, if we continue to delay emissions reductions, the measures to achieve the United Nations' 2050 net-zero emissions goal will have to be faster, more intense, and more difficult to implement. Some keep arguing that, for the time being, emissions reductions should be more modest so that society can prepare for maximum efforts starting in the 2030s and 2040s. The problem here is that, although both approaches reach the same point, the carbon footprint would be larger because more GHGs would be emitted in the same period.
5. The 2021-2025 five-year period is about to end. What have GHG emissions been like during this period?
Using data collected until 2022 and our model projections from then until now, the report estimates that Catalonia has seen an 11% reduction compared to 1990 emissions. This is due to the increase in electricity prices, whish has reduced the public’s consumption and, consequently, so have emissions, as electricity is still mostly fossil-based. Looking at sectors, some of those that contribute the most to GHG emissions in Catalonia have reduced their emissions, such as industry and agriculture and livestock. However, others have increased slightly, such as transport, which is the largest contributor, and energy.
6. And what do the CECC report's projections say for the five-year periods 2026-2030 and 2031-2035?
For the following five-year periods, we project emissions reductions relative to 1990 of 42% and 67%, respectively. Furthermore, here is another very significant aspect of our proposal: our models’ projections come together with a gradual reduction in the gross domestic product (GDP) growth until reaching a stationary economy in 2040, i.e., without GDP growth. This is because the growth rate of GDP and GHG emissions are interrelated, as the economy relies heavily on the burning of fossil fuels for production, transportation of goods and people, etc. That is why decarbonization scenarios are defined based on countries' economic growth targets, and so if emissions are to be significantly reduced, the GDP rate must also decline.
7. How did the models used by the CECC got to project a stationary economy in 2040?
What we did was instruct our models to consider an energy substitution, that is, an increase in the use of renewable energy accompanied by greater efficiency or a decrease in energy intensity, which implies maintaining the GDP rate using less energy. This hypothesis is the same as that of the International Energy Agency and PROENCAT, because we must adhere to them, which believe that in such a scenario we can continue to grow. However, the scientific perspective is that growth cannot be infinite, and therefore, we propose bringing forward the emissions reductions to reach 2040 with that goal almost met. We could then take advantage of this maturity of the system to transition toward a stationary economy by further reducing emissions. In this way, in addition to decarbonizing, we would be eliminating the need to import a small amount of fossil fuels that would be necessary to continue growing when the use of renewable energy plants reached its limit. Reaching this consensus has been difficult, because not everyone in the CECC is in favor of degrowth.
8. How has it been to adapt the existing models to the context of Catalonia?
In our report, we propose several scenarios based on different GDP growth rates, but for the baseline scenario, we adhered to Catalonia's growth targets, which the law requires to be consistent with Spain’s and Europs objectives. Furthermore, to define the budget, we tried to estimate what our contribution should be to achieve the European Union's "Fit for 55" goal. The Paris Agreement determined that each country should establish its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the national carbon budget to achieve this global target. This contribution has to be proportional to each state's GDP and to the effort each nation considers it can make.
9. And how did you calculate the contribution that Catalonia must make to achieve the "Fit for 55"goal?
Spain's National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC) does not detail each region’s contribution, so we have based our approach on some hypothetical Catalan NDCs. The contributions of the different Spanish regions to the state's GDP are very diverse, and ours is quite high, around 20%. This means that our contribution to the budget must be also higher than the state average shown in the PNIEC. In the end, the path we have proposed is not the most demanding possible, but it is more exigent than that of the PNIEC and that shown in PROENCAT, both in terms of emissions reduction and the timeframes for reducing them. Thus, by 2035, there would already be sectors that would be very close to net-zero emissions, and by 2040, we would have almost reached the final goal.
10. Therefore, when the Parliament approves it, Catalonia will have the first carbon budget in the entire national territory, right?
Yes, and this is very positive, but it has also posed a great challenge for us in preparing the report, because we had no reference to work from. The Spanish PNIEC only proposes decarbonization plans based on state GDP growth targets, while European regulations only define the time goals for achieving global GHG reduction targets. So we had to decide the whole structure and content of this report, which is not binding, but purely informative and advisory. However, it is very necessary because it shows the need for a team of experts to define a decarbonization plan that will contribute to the"Fit for 55" goal, which is binding.
11. And, once the budget is approved, what will the CECC's role be?
Preparing the budget was our first objective. Once it is approved, the CECC will monitor it and make new proposals when necessary. In addition to preparing the budget, the committee's role is to monitor its implementation and progress, but we still don’t know how this monitoring will be carried out because the methodology has not been defined yet. We are seven members and two technicians with different profiles who will be renewed from time to time, so the team will change, but every step we take will be the result of a consensus, which is not always easy. We must not forget that the members are proposed by the different parties in the Parliament, with different sensibilities, and we become part of the CECC after the agreement of all the parties that vote in the Parliament.