Here we are, before COP 26.

Carbon Neutral Goals by Country

JUNE 17, 2021 – Visual Capitalist

Those are the pledges since Paris …..

Where we will be after COP 26?

So when are countries committed to reaching net zero carbon emissions, and how serious is their pledge? This infographic from the National Public Utilities Council highlights the world’s carbon neutral pledges. [as of COP 26]

The first question is how quickly countries are trying to get to net zero. 137 countries have committed to carbon neutrality, as tracked by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit and confirmed by pledges to the Carbon Neutrality Coalition and recent policy statements by governments. But the earlier the pledge, the better, and most of the commitments are centered around 2050.  

As far as early achievers go, Bhutan, Suriname and Panama are the only 3 countries that the UN says have achieved carbon neutrality and are actually carbon negative (removing more carbon than they emit).

Uruguay’s 2030 target might be the earliest, but it is not yet set in stone. The earliest commitment actually enshrined in law is Sweden’s 2045 target.

Including Sweden, only six countries have passed their carbon-neutral targets into law. They include Denmark, France, Hungary, New Zealand, and the UK.

An additional five countries have proposed legislation in the works, including Canada and South Korea, as well as the entirety of the EU.

Meanwhile, 24 countries have their climate targets set as official policy. They include Brazil, China, Germany, and the U.S., some of the world’s largest emitters.

99 of the 137 pledges are only under discussion at this time, or more than 72%. That means that they have no official standing as of yet, and are harder to act on.

But as time starts to pass, pressure on countries to act on their carbon neutral pledges is beginning to grow.

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Public Utilities Learning to Decarbonize

Formed in mid to late 2020 out of a series of conversations where public utilities were looking to speak with their industry brethren to benchmark decarbonization practices, share lessons learned across different geographic and socio-economic environments, and generally come to a place where a compendium of knowledge was stored on the subject.

It was likely that there would not be any one specific utility that would have the bandwidth to take the lead in organizing this type of forum, so Motive Power took on the initiative and the NPUC was born. Motive Power, Zpryme, and numerous utilities across the US, with media support from Visual Capitalists, are poised to become the leading experts in public utility decarbonization efforts.