FAQ

Why are the aggregated results for developed countries from the Climate Action Tracker different to other studies?

The Climate Action Tracker assesses the aggregated reductions that are achieved by developed countries by their proposed targets. It does not only look at the proposed reduction but also quantifies potential credits or debits from accounting for land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF). In the Kyoto Protocol these emissions are usually outside of the target, but detailed rules allow to account certain activities in forests toward the countries' targets. These rules are currently under discussion and the details of these rules can have a significant effect on the countries' ambition level.
For each developed country we assumed the set of rules for forestry that the country has said it prefers. This results in total in credits in 2020 of about 5% of all developed countries emissions in 1990. Therefore emissions of all other sectors can be 5 percentage points higher.
Other analyses may not have considered forestry in such detail and therefore may come up with a more ambitious reduction range.

Why is the EU rated different to Switzerland, if both propose a reduction of 20% below 1990?

We did rate all countries individually based on their particular national circumstances. The reduction value from 1990 is not the major criterion.
First of all the effort sharing range is individual for each country or group. It is based on effort sharing approaches that use indicators such as per-capita emissions, per-capita GDP or current energy mix to assign reduction requirements to countries. Under one approach a country with already high share of renewables may have to do less compared to 1990 than a country that is dependant on coal. In another approach a country with very high per-capita GDP needs to do more than a country with low GDP. Taking all approaches together we derive an individual range for each country, which is usually large. If the proposed target is less ambitious than this range, it is rated Inadequate.
Second, countries may receive more or less credits from forestry. This depends on the emissions/removals from forestry but also on the country specific rules of accounting that we applied (see above).