This working paper addresses the problem of preserving consistency of national or regional greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction pathways with the global warming targets stipulated by the Paris Agreement. We propose a method of deriving robust, physically grounded and globally consistent limits of cumulative GHG emissions and corresponding reference reduction pathways for both the 1.5 °C and the 2°C warming target, against which national/regional GHG emission pathways can be compared. This derivation builds on the study by Jonas et al. (2014) and its update Jonas & Żebrowski (2016) and is based on the recently updated estimates of carbon budgets for 1.5 °C and 2°C warming targets presented in the IPCC’s special report on a global warming of 1.5 °C (Rogelj et al. 2018).

This working paper (i) presents our method together with a concise physical background; and (ii) demonstrates how consistency with global warming targets can be assessed for scenarios of green transformation for the economies of a large region (EU) and a small country (Austria).