Setting the Course for Net Zero

Abstract The Road to Net Zero starts from the Paris Agreement, which sets a global goal to limit global warming to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, and an ambition to limit warming to 1.5 °C. The Agreement represents a turning point in the approach to tackling climate change, moving from a mitigation logic focused on reducing carbon emissions to an exit logic focused on full decarbonisation. The challenge is to translate the ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement into practical and achievable action plans that can be implemented at national and local levels. This will require a coordinated and joint effort by governments, businesses, and civil society to mobilise resources, build capacity, and put in place the necessary policies and regulations to support the transition to a low-carbon future. After discussing basic climate science foundations in Sect. 2.2 and the global climate policy ‘Road to Paris’, as well as the implications of the Paris Agreement in Sect. 2.3, national policy frameworks and governance mechanisms that can be implemented at the national level to meet the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are reviewed in Sect. 2.4. While the expert discussion between Prof. Grimm, Dr Becker, and Oliver Zipse in Sect. 2.5 is dedicated to the balancing act between technology openness and energy policy control mechanisms, Sect. 2.6 gives an outlook on how the goals of the Paris Agreement can be broken down to the company level. In this context, future research questions for the evaluation of legitimised measurement and target-setting frameworks for the private sector are discussed.