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After the Paris Agreement: What Role for the BRICS in Global Climate Governance? / Christian Downie and Marc Williams, Global Policy, first published: 15 April 2018 https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12550The rising power of the BRICS is now at the centre of debates about the future of global governance. Despite the consensus that the political, economic and strategic differences between the BRICS trump the commonalities, the BRICS have managed a level of cooperation that has exceeded expectations. This has led to inquiries about their influence on several policy domains, especially global finance. However, less attention has been given to the role of the BRICS in global climate governance, especially in the aftermath of the Paris climate agreement in 2015. Following the Paris Agreement, and the US' withdrawal, this paper examines the capacity of the BRICS to re‐shape global climate governance. Based on an analysis of the emissions profile of the BRICS, and multilateral and bilateral meetings between BRICS countries since 2015, it argues that while significant obstacles to the BRICS acting as a coalition remain, there are areas that can be identified where cooperation could be scaled up in coming years.Les comptes mondiaux du carbone en 2018 / Clément Metivier, Clément Bultheel et Sébastien Postic. I4CE, 17 avril 2018, 5 p. https://www.i4ce.org/download/comptes-mondiaux-carbone-2018/Les comptes mondiaux du carbone en 2018 d’I4CE présentent les principales tendances concernant la mise en œuvre des politiques de tarification explicites du carbone dans le monde en 2018.Low-Carbon Transition in the Cement Industry / Araceli Fernandez and Yvonne Leung. Paris : International Energy Agency, April 2018, 66 p. (Technology roadmap) - free download https://webstore.iea.org/technology-roadmap-low-carbon-transition-in-the-cement-industryThe cement sector is the third-largest industrial energy consumer and the second-largest industrial CO2 emitter globally. Rising global population and urbanisation patterns, coupled with infrastructure development needs, drive up the demand for cement and concrete and increase pressure to accelerate action in reducing the carbon footprint of cement production. Under a scenario that considers announced carbon mitigation commitments and energy efficiency targets by countries, the cement sector would increase its direct CO2 emissions just 4% globally by 2050, for an expected growth of 12% in cement production over the same period. However, more ambitious action would be needed to achieve global climate goals. This Technology Roadmap builds on the long-standing collaboration of the IEA with the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). It provides an update of the Cement Technology Roadmap 2009: Carbon Emissions Reductions up to 2050, and sets a strategy for the cement sector to achieve the decoupling of cement production growth from related direct CO2 emissions through improving energy efficiency, switching to fuels that are less carbon intensive, reducing the clinker to cement ratio, and implementing emerging and innovative technologies such as carbon capture. The report therefore outlines a detailed action plan for specific stakeholders to 2050 as a reference and a source of inspiration for international and national policy makers to support evidence-based decisions and regulations.Avoided economic impacts of energy demand changes by 1.5 and 2 °C climate stabilization / Chan Park, Shinichiro Fujimori, Tomoko Hasegawa, Jun'ya Takakura, Kiyoshi Takahashi and Yasuaki Hijioka, Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 13, n° 4, 16 April 2018 http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab724/meta/h5&#62;Energy demand associated with space heating and cooling is expected to be affected by climate change. There are several global projections of space heating and cooling use that take into consideration climate change, but a comprehensive uncertainty of socioeconomic and climate conditions, including a 1.5 °C global mean temperature change, has never been assessed. This paper shows the economic impact of changes in energy demand for space heating and cooling under multiple socioeconomic and climatic conditions. We use three shared socioeconomic pathways as socioeconomic conditions. For climate conditions, we use two representative concentration pathways that correspond to 4.0 °C and 2.0 °C scenarios, and a 1.5 °C scenario driven from the 2.0 °C scenario with assumption in conjunction with five general circulation models. We find that the economic impacts of climate change are largely affected by socioeconomic assumptions, and global GDP change rates range from +0.21% to −2.01% in 2100 under the 4.0 °C scenario, depending on the socioeconomic condition. Sensitivity analysis that differentiates the thresholds of heating and cooling degree days clarifies that the threshold is a strong factor that generates these differences. Meanwhile, the impact of the 1.5 °C is small regardless of socioeconomic assumptions (−0.02% to −0.06%). The economic loss caused by differences in socioeconomic assumption under the 1.5 °C scenario is much smaller than that under the 2 °C scenario, which implies that stringent climate mitigation can work as a risk hedge to socioeconomic development diversity.