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The paper presents the latest developments regarding the Paris Agreement. Since 2015, several countries have pledged to reduce their emissions to zero. Also, the latest developments show the involvement of states in the fight against climate change and their determination to limit the increase of temperatures to + 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. However, so far, the states have failed in reaching a consensus on the global emissions trading scheme, which is of paramount importance.

Purpose – At the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (COP 21) in Paris, 195 governments reached an agreement pivotal not only for countries but also for companies. The Paris Agreement makes it impossible to practice business as usual. The transition to a low-carbon coffee industry could be achieved by fostering corporate sustainability. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence of how to adopt the principles of Paris Agreement by enhancing the corporate sustainability of a Mexican coffee-roaster company using the inventory phase of the life cycle assessment tool. Design/methodology/approach – The data collection process followed the requirements of the International Reference Life Cycle Data System Handbook, developed by the Institute for Environment and Sustainability in the European Commission Joint Research Centre, and data on packaging materials and energy production were drawn from a commercially available database in the LCA software SimaPro. Findings – Compiling data on the energy of the firm’s material flows in a firm revealed opportunities to improve energy efficiency and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The results of the inventory analysis can be used to evaluate the specific environmental impacts of the coffee-roasting process at this Mexican coffee company. Data compilation activities for energy flows identified the need to install liquefied petroleum gas measuring devices and individual measuring devices for electricity consumption in different areas of the coffee plant. It is recommended that, while implementing this option, the company also develop an energy management program to achieve energy efficiency. Practical implications – The inventory data in this case study permit comparisons of the current state of the system studied and its possible future states and offer stakeholders relevant information on resource use. Similarly, the project results provide the basis for future research on environmental performance in the coffee industry in Mexico and for the development of policies regarding the production process in the coffee supply chain. Consequently, this research can help fulfil Mexico’s commitment to the Paris Agreement. Social implications – Reaching the goal of the Paris Agreement will require gathering key information for each single company. The current case study has provided key data to foster the principles of sustainability in the Mexican coffee industry to help this sector to transit toward sustainable development, which is a new demand of the Mexican society. Even though it may seem simple, this is the hardest step for enhancing stakeholder involvement in corporate sustainability. Originality/value – The main contribution of this research to science and practice is to confirm that fostering corporate sustainability is easier and more feasible when energy flow information is available.

South Africa is facing the triple challenge of (a) fuelling economic development and meeting the growing energy demand; (b) increasing the reliability of the electricity system; and (c) ensuring that domestic greenhouse gas emissions peak no later than 2030 to meet its nationally determined contributions (NDC) under the 2015 Paris Agreement. Recently discovered domestic shale gas reserves are being considered as a potential new energy source to provide clean, reliable and cheap electricity while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions relative to the dominant coal sector. In order to determine if shale gas can play a viable role in solving South Africa's energy trilemma, we apply a country-level version of the integrated assessment model MESSAGEix to analyze and quantify the interdependencies between shale gas, the energy system and South Africa's greenhouse gas emissions trajectory. The data and scripts to generate this study will be made available at https://github.com/tum-ewk/message_ix_south_africa following the publication of this manuscript. Our results indicate that shale gas extraction costs must be below 3 USD/GJ for this energy source to reach a significant share in the fuel mix; this is well below current cost estimates. If, however, low-cost shale gas is available, both coal and low-carbon sources are replaced by natural gas. Whether carbon dioxide emissions increase or decrease as a result depends on the stringency of the climate change mitigation policy in place: without carbon pricing, natural gas replaces coal and mitigates harmful emissions; under high carbon prices, power generation from coal is phased out in any case, and natural gas competes with zero-carbon renewables, leading to an increase of emissions compared to a no-shale scenario.

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Process metallurgy is the basis for the production, refining and recycling of metals and is based on knowledge of transport phenomena, thermodynamics and reaction kinetics, and of their interaction in high-temperature, heterogeneous metallurgical processes. The entropy concept is crucial in describing such systems, but, because entropy is not directly observable, some effort is required to grasp the role of entropy in process metallurgy. In this paper, we will give some examples of how entropy has a positive effect on efforts to reach the process objectives in some cases, while in other cases, entropy acts in contradiction to the desired results. In order to do this, it is necessary to have a closer look at both the entropy concept itself as well as at other functions like free energy and exergy since they encompass entropy. The chosen case is the production of silicon. It is the huge entropy change in the process that is utilized. The case is not chosen arbitrary. Indeed, it is the authors' strong belief that silicon will be one of the foundations for the environmental and energy future planned for in the "Paris-agreement". We will also explore relatively recent research in physics and thermodynamics that led to the description of the concepts like "dissipative systems and structures". Dissipative systems are thermodynamically open systems, operating out of, and often far from thermodynamic equilibrium and exhibit dynamical regimes that are in some sense in a reproducible self-organized steady state. Such structures can arise almost everywhere provided this structure, feeding on low entropy resources, dissipates entropy generated in the form of heat and waste material in parallel with the wanted products/results. Examples range from metallurgical processes to the emergence of industrial symbiosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The drive to economic growth has persisted in contemporary societies, despite its effects on the very foundations of the global economy, whereas the discourse of sustainability has not surpassed the level of "wishful thinking". The evolution of the global ecological footprint, which underlines climate change impact, points to a narrow path in the reconciliation of social and environmental imperatives for present and future generations and to a redoubled need for social and environmental equity. Within an approach that postulates a stronger connection between discourse and practice, both Sustainable Development Goals and COP21 Paris Agreement strengthen the strategy of universal involvement and commitment, recognizing the meagre nature of results obtained so far, and demanding alternative action for effective change regarding a new and strategic global agenda. This article reflects on this universal desideratum which requires redoubled attention to the decline - and also recovery - of environmental and social conditions.

Abstract This paper analyzes alternative pricing schemes for funding investment in climate policies. This paper proposes a new policy scenario, explicitly disentangling the issue of burden sharing of financing new investments from the issue of taxation energy consumption and therefor emissions. We compare traditional allocation schemes with an optimal Ramsey pricing by applying demand elasticity values, derived from empirical estimations of household behavior for the 106 leading countries in the world, representing around 90% of total world energy consumption and carbon emissions in 2014. We calculate country-specific alternative taxation options: uniform, equitable and Ramsey pricing schemes, applied to households, assessing the related welfare effects. Our results show that the optimal pricing scheme, for a given investment need, can improve world welfare at the expenses of equitable considerations. In addition, the aggregate societal benefit outweighs the losses associated with specific group of countries, paving the way for easier political agreement, using compensation schemes to redistribute the proceeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to the 2015 Paris Conference of the Parties (COP), every state was requested to submit a pledge of their own design. To date, there has been a lack of large-n studies that provide a broad picture of these pledges. We employ Discourse Network Analysis to examine critically the climate pledges of all 162 actors at the Paris COP. Our research offers four main contributions. First, we provide data regarding the mitigation and adaptation components of every national pledge. Second, we identify six types of mitigation targets, and visually cluster every state according to these formats. Third, we argue that the pledges of the Umbrella Group of non-EU developed states, and of the group of oil exporting countries, showed greater internal similarity than the group comprising Brazil, China, India and South Africa. Finally, we critique the method as a means of analysing the new global climate governance context and argue that the method offers an innovative and unique means of understanding this complex policy landscape, when applied in a specific and focused manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I set out some of the key aspects of the Paris COP 21 Climate Change Agreement. The Paris Agreement was initially reported as a major success. However, this was in so far as many thought any kind of agreement at all was unlikely, and because the Agreement includes Article 2: an aspiration to maintain average global temperature increases to significantly less than 2°C. I then ask the question: if the Paris Agreement is a success of sorts, has anything fundamental changed in order to translate the conditional success of achieving an agreement into an actual success that will realise the goals of the Agreement? I address this in terms of early assessment of trends and the Nationally Determined Contributions, how responsibility is positioned in the Agreement, and the political economy context, which has called forth the need for an agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

UN Climate talks have become an annual fixture on the global diplomatic calendar since 1995. Some have been praised, others denounced, but the levels of greenhouse gas emissions have risen regardless year-on-year. This essay and eyewitness account argues that the Paris COP 21 talks like its predecessors failed to deliver a meaningful result, judged from either a scientific or social justice point-of-view. However it did reveal the presence of a growing and increasingly sophisticated and powerful climate justice movement that heralds the most hope for a just response to the global climate crisis [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At this time, most climate researchers are only using a limited range of futures approaches: for example, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) future scenarios have been developed primarily with empirical predictive methods that extrapolate trends. These seriously underestimate the risk of nonlinear developments and critical failures. This article examines the Paris Climate Conference (COP) 21 agreement on climate mitigation; explains why current efforts are based on false assumptions and likely to fail; argues that holistic, integrative methods are needed to avoid disaster; and uses these methods to develop a practical strategy for accelerating systemic transformation. Despite the impressive diplomatic achievements of the Paris Agreement, there is a dangerous lag between the pace of political, economic, and technological change and the rapid (nonnegotiable) rate of climate change. The challenge is to find ways to manage the conflict between the need to work within existing institutional frameworks and the reality that they are not (and may be structurally incapable of) acting quickly enough to prevent catastrophic outcomes. This dichotomy may be resolved by using a three-track strategy: the first track will focus on accelerating existing climate mitigation efforts by encouraging decision-makers to use holistic, critical-safety risk management methods. The second track will counter ideological opposition with constructive alternative narratives. The third track will help catalyze the global movement needed to empower structural transformation and the emergence of a sustainable global system. It will not be possible to resolve many complex global socioecological problems (climate, water, food, energy, growing inequality, etc.) without transformational change. Integrative, whole-systems methods are now needed to accelerate the evolution of a sustainable global system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2015 UN climate negotiations in Paris resulted in an inclusive, binding treaty that succeeds the Kyoto Protocol. In contrast to the failure at Copenhagen in 2009, the Paris negotiations are therefore seen as a major diplomatic success that has regenerated faith in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as a forum for dynamic multilateralism. The Paris Agreement provides a robust framework for ratcheting up efforts to combat global warming. However, the Agreement’s value will remain unclear for some time. The historical path to the Paris accord is outlined, and a preliminary assessment is offered of its key elements and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union, by adopting the European Green Deal, aims at an extremely ambitious goal to become climate neutral by 2050. This objective implies a massive investment plan to reduce disparities between EU Member States and to support their transformation efforts in order to reshape the Union into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy. The objective of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of implementation of SDG 7 targets in EU Member States 5 years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Using hierarchical clustering analysis to reveal hidden associative structures, EU countries were grouped in 2015 and 2019 based on Eurostat data in order to identify and analyze key characteristics, but also to evaluate their evolution over time. The results of this research revealed clusters of high-performing countries, as well as countries that require increased attention and support to ease the transition to a greener economy. If in 2015 the cluster of the best performing countries consisted of four EU countries, in 2019, their number increased to eight EU countries, simultaneously with an improvement of the indicators, proving a real concern and involvement regarding the achievement of SDG 7 targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]