South Africa's NDC Targets for 2025 and 2030

South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) released an updated draft Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) for public consultation in March 2021, as an update to South Africa’s first NDC communicated under the Paris Agreement in 2016. The mitigation targets contained in the 2016 NDC consisted of a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target range in 2025 of 398 to 614 Mt CO2-eq, and in 2030 a GHG emissions target range of 398to 614 Mt CO2-eq, for all national GHG emissions, including those from land use. The draft update proposes revised target ranges of 398 to 510 Mt CO2-eq for 2025, and 398 to 440 Mt CO2-eq for 2030.

These targets were identified by the DFFE on the basis of:

• An assessment of South Africa’s “fair share” of global emissions for 2025 and 2030, in light of the latest science and the Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature goal of keeping global warming to “well below 2 degrees Celsius” and making efforts to keep warming within 1.5 degrees, and
• An assessment of the likely GHG emissions outcome of the implementation of current South African policies with a potentially significant mitigation impact, including the Integrated Resource Plan 2019 (IRP 2019), the draft post-2015 National Energy Efficiency Strategy, the Green Transport Strategy (GTS) and the carbon tax

Targets were set fairly conservatively to take into account uncertainties in the estimation of national GHG emissions, and uncertainties in policy implementation.

The Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) held public hearings on the proposed updated NDC on 7 May 2021, which led to the commissioning of additional technical work by the University of Cape Town’s Energy Systems Research Group (ESRG) on the NDC targets, to:

• Assess South Africa’s “fair share” contribution to global mitigation efforts in terms of the Paris Agreement, especially with respect to the 2030 target
• Model, using the SATIMGE economy-wide modelling framework, potential GHG emission target levels corresponding to this “fair share”
• Propose options for the NDC target range in response to the DFFE’s proposed target ranges, in the light of key national policy priorities​