Intervention points for achieving carbon neutrality

The first Climate Neutrality Forum (CNF) took place in 2021 bringing together over 1,000 academics and climate policy experts in a multi-hub hybrid in-person and virtual meeting held in Berlin, Oxford, and Milan, on 8-9 September 2021, followed by six weekly webinars in the lead up to 26th Conference of Parties meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26). The forum explored challenges and key policy interventions for achieving climate neutrality. The CNF was informed by the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) during its 6th Assessment Cycle in particular the IPCC Special Report on Warming of 1.5 C (SR1.5) and the IPCC Working Group I report on Scientific Understanding of Climate Change which was published in August 2021.

Climate neutrality is considered to mean a cessation of further warming of the Earth’s climate system by atmospheric greenhouse gases. It is aligned with, and informed by, the Paris Agreement temperature goal to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”.

The forum sought Sensitive Intervention Points for achieving Climate Neutrality: Solutions which transform a system or take advantage of an amplification dynamics in part of the system that is at or near a tipping point or state of ‘criticality’ (Hepburn et al., 2020).

These were evaluated on:

• Timing, to halve emissions by 2030, and again by 2040, and accelerate removals along the way;
• Impact, to reduce or remove GHG emissions by at least 1Gt in this time frame;
• Practicality, politically, technologically, and economically;
• Risk, potential unintended consequences and tradeoffs.

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