Series 'Ushering in a New Era of Carbon Neutrality' (1) Decarbonization Trends and Innovative Technologies

摘要

Last October, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in his policy address expressed his intentions to focus on realizinga green society and pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.His pledge was made against the backdrop of a global decarbonization trend. The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015 atthe 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), set out twolong-term goals. One goal is to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably to 1.5°C, compared to preindustriallevels. The other is to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible to achieve a balancebetween anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the second half of the21st century. Carbon neutrality means achieving this balance between emissions and removals. The Special Report onGlobal Warming of 1.5°C, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018, concluded thatglobal net-zero emissions would be required between 2050 and 2070 to limit global warming to well below 2°C and thatcarbon neutrality would be required around 2050 to limit warming to 1.5°C (see Table 1).