Food matters: Dietary shifts increase the feasibility of 1.5°C pathways in line with the Paris Agreement

A transition to healthy diets like the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet
could considerably reduce GHG emissions. However, the specific
contributions of dietary shifts for the feasibility of 1.5°C pathways
remain unclear. Here, we use the open-source Integrated Assessment
Modeling (IAM) framework REMIND-MAgPIE to compare 1.5°C pathways with and
without dietary shifts. We find that a flexitarian diet increases the
feasibility of the Paris Agreement climate goals in different ways: The
reduction of GHG emissions related to dietary shifts, especially methane
from ruminant enteric fermentation, increases the 1.5°C-compatible carbon
budget. Therefore, dietary shifts allow us to achieve the same climate
outcome with less carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and less stringent CO2
emission reductions in the energy system, which reduces pressure on GHG
prices, energy prices and food expenditures. This dataset provides raw
data for all figures shown in the paper. It includes data for three
scenarios: SSP2-NDC, SSP2-1.5°C and SSP2-1.5°C-DietShift. All data is at
global level and for the period 2020-2100. Raw data for each figure panel
is provided on individual data sheets in a single .xlsx file. The
structure of the data is identical on each sheet, organized in columns for
model, scenario, region, variable, unit, year and value.