CRESCENDO on realizing the Paris Agreement

The CRESCENDO project has released its second policy information sheet entitled "Realizing the 2015 Paris Agreement: Key findings from the climate research community".  

The policy information sheet presents some of the science and policy insights from CRESCENDO’s leading Earth system scientists pertinent to realizing the Paris Agreement. These insights are now published as a policy leaflet available in seven different languages (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish). 

The key findings from the latest research are:

  • All scenarios that keep warming below 1.5°C demand rapid and sustained reductions in CO2 emissions by 2030 and continuing thereafter.
  • All successful 1.5°C scenarios require net zero CO2 emissions by 2050.
  • The scale of BECCS assumed in successful 1.5 °C scenarios may conflict with other important sustainability goals.
  • Considering climate change mitigation along with other sustainability goals, protection of existing forests and natural afforestation may show advantages over large-scale deployment of BECCS.
  • A Low Energy Demand scenario shows it is possible to stay below 1.5°C warming with limited or no reliance on negative emissions technologies.
CRESCENDO 2nd policy briefing
Future warming could be reduced if the planting of forests and fuel crops was massively increased alongside carbon capture and storage. Carbon emission reductions required to meet the Paris Agreement will require a significant increase in renewable energy production to meet future electricity demand.

In CRESCENDO SMHI is  coordinating EC-Earth modelling efforts, including the improving the representation of key processes in EC-Earth,  evaluating the model and performing climate simulations. SMHI leads CRESCENDO's contribution to CMIP6-ScenarioMIP and is also coordinating the project's communication and knowledge dissemination.

Find out more on CRESCENDO website.