Israel’s State of Climate Tech 2021

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Introduction

Climate Change – Averting Climate Catastrophe Climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to humanity and to the planet. The Sixth IPCC Report demonstrates the unequivocal role of human influence in the warming of the atmosphere, ocean, and land, leading to changes in the climate system as a whole, as well as frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (Figure 1). Bold, rapid, and sustained reductions in CO 2 , methane, and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) are necessary to limit global warming. 1 The main aim of the 2015 Paris Agreement, ratified by 191 countries,

is to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions such that the rise in mean global temperature will be limited to well below 2° C , preferably to 1.5° C , compared to pre-industrial levels. This entails a reduction of about 50% from the 2019 emission level of 52.4 Gt CO 2 e by 2030 and attaining net zero emissions by 2050. To date, emission trends and pledged national commitments fall well short of the Paris Agreement goals (Figure 3). The emissions gap is large (20-23 Gt CO 2 e), and the projected temperature increase in line with current policies is 2.7-3.1° C .

Broad deployment of existing technologies as well as scaleup and adoption of early- stage technologies have the potential to reduce global emissions byabout two-thirds

1 IPCC, 2021: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M. I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J. B. R. Matthews, T. K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. Currently in Press.

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