The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that deals with the reduction, adaptation and financing of greenhouse gas emissions from 2020. The agreement aims to address the threat of global climate change by keeping global temperatures well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels this century and to continue efforts to further limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. [1] On June 1, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the agreement. [24] Under Article 28, the effective withdrawal date of the United States is the fastest possible date, given that the agreement entered into force in the United States on November 4, 2016. If it had decided to withdraw from the UNFCCC, it could be informed immediately (the UNFCCC came into force in 1994 for the United States) and come into force a year later. On August 4, 2017, the Trump administration officially announced to the United Nations that the United States intends to withdraw from the Paris Agreement as soon as it has a legal right to do so. [25] The formal declaration of resignation could only be submitted after three years of implementation of the agreement for the United States in 2019. [26] [27] On November 4, 2019, the United States notified the custodian of its withdrawal from the agreement, which was to take effect exactly one year after that date. [30] Since November 2020, 194 states and the European Union have signed the agreement. 188 countries and the EU, which account for about 79% of global greenhouse gas emissions, have ratified the agreement or have joined the agreement, including China and India, the countries with the first and third CO2 emissions among UNFCCC members. [12] [13] [14] All 197 UNFCCC members have signed or joined.
In 2018, Saudi Arabia signed a Memorandum of Understanding with SoftBank Group to build 200 GW of solar energy by 2030. In previous evaluations, we had considered this project in a “planned policy” scenario. In October 2018, reports revealed that the project had been put on hold, but the Saudi government rejected it. Since then, there has been no development. Given the lack of progress and the new renewable energy targets for 2030, announced by the Saudi government in 2019, we believe that this project is unlikely to progress. That is why we have removed this megaproject from our program projections as a separate “planned policy” scenario.