The Paris Agreement has laid out the emission reduction targets for limiting global warming to preferably 1,5 °C in order to avoid catastrophic consequences. What is your city's fair share of the 1,5 °C global target? Read more to learn about the method, data sources, and interpretation of this target for your city.

First, let's shed some light on the terms. 1,5 °C alignment target is equivalent to the Paris Alignment target or a Science-based target. They all stem from the IPCC scientific advice to limit global warming, which informed countries taking part in the Paris Agreement. We have chosen to name the target specifically using 1,5 °C to be as concise as possible. Let's look at the interpretation and method.

The 1,5°C alignment target defines a numerical goal to comply with the global goal of reducing emissions to a "safe" level. You can use it to compare the required emission reduction for your city (blue dotted line in the dashboard) and analyze the gap with your current climate plan (red dotted line) in 2030.

This target is another reference to check if your 2030 climate ambition is high enough, or if you rather should consider stepping up to a more ambitious climate plan.

⚠️ The indicator is only available/valid for your 2030 target. The calculations are based on the Human Development Index (HDI) which is currently only available up until 2030.

The method used by Futureproofed to enable this feature follows the approach of WWF's One Planet City Challenge (OPCC). This approach requires cities to have data on Scope 1&2 emissions and population. The limited number of data points required by the OPCC approach allows cities with scarce data to calculate their targets.

Each city's share of the required emission reduction depends on the local context. Some cities have a lot more resources available and have contributed a lot more to the rise in emissions than others. That's why the reduction target is based on the Human Development Index (HDI). It translates the global emission reduction target to fair targets for each specific region or area.

The formula to calculate a 2030 science-based target is as mentioned in the OPCC Approach, which you can find in the "SBT's for cities" guide (p9). It consists of four steps.

Population forecast data is needed to compute the fair share of the 1,5 °C trajectory target per city. In absence of known data from the cities, a growth rate was used to project the population data to a 2030 forecast. Known population data of past years is provided by the cities to FP via the Data input page. Most cities have reported population data for 2017 or 2018.

Official UN forecasts were retrieved from the Department of Economics and Social Affairs of the UN. The forecast provides growth rates per country based on official statistics. Growth rates are available in brackets of 5 years. Average growth between 2020 and 2030 was estimated and applied from the latest year where population data was available. The formula used is as follows:

Population 2030 = Po ( 1 + r )^n

Where

The use of the official UN population growth forecast allows to systematically provide an estimation of the 2030 population for all cities. In case cities have custom values or wish to use another growth rate different from the one provided by the UN, they will be able to do so on the Data input page.