A Copenhagen Prognosis: Towards a Safe Climate Future

A report by the Stockholm Environment Institute and partners arguing that staying below a 2°C warming limit requires rapid global greenhouse gas emission reductions, reaching essentially zero by mid-century. It emphasizes the technical feasibility of this transition and the necessity of North-South cooperation to ensure developing nations can expand energy access while decarbonizing.

• To maintain a 75 per cent chance of keeping global warming below 2°C, greenhouse gas emissions must decline extremely rapidly after 2015 and reach essentially zero by mid-century.
• Energy transformations toward a low-carbon future are technologically possible and economically affordable, with aggregate global losses for the century estimated to be below 2.5 per cent of Gross World Product.
• The European Union can achieve a 40 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 through domestic action, requiring radical improvements in energy efficiency, accelerated retirement of fossil fuels, and a shift to renewable energy, with costs between 1 per cent and 3 per cent of EU GDP.
• Developing countries, including China and India, can follow ambitious CO2 mitigation pathways while still meeting economic development and energy access goals.
• Agricultural land use systems, which account for 17-30 per cent of global GHG emissions, must be transformed from a net source of emissions to a net global sink to address the climate crisis and feed a projected world population of 9 billion by 2050.
• To ensure an equitable global climate accord, industrialized countries' emission allocations must decline to zero or become negative between 2020 and 2030 to leave sufficient carbon budget for developing nations.
• Addressing climate change requires targeting non-CO2 greenhouse gases and black carbon aerosols, which account for 45 per cent of climate forcing, as these can help prevent abrupt climate change in the near term.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (n.d.). A Copenhagen Prognosis: Towards a Safe Climate Future. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate-mitigation-adaptation/a20copenhagen20prognosis.pdf

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. A Copenhagen Prognosis: Towards a Safe Climate Future. n.d. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate-mitigation-adaptation/a20copenhagen20prognosis.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=A Copenhagen Prognosis: Towards a Safe Climate Future |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate-mitigation-adaptation/a20copenhagen20prognosis.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitutendcopenhagen, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{A Copenhagen Prognosis: Towards a Safe Climate Future}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate-mitigation-adaptation/a20copenhagen20prognosis.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }