IPCC: How the comments work

BBC has written about leaked documents to IPCC. Here we explain how the comments strengthen the reports, so they become relevant for climate policy.

Published 22.10.2021

About every six to seven years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published new assessment reports that summarise new research associated with climate change. These reports are written by scientists. The reports lay out alternative paths and measures and their consequences, but they do not take a position on which actions should be permitted or not etc. The scientific results laid out by the reports are meant to be relevant for development of climate policy, but are not policy prescriptive.

Assessment report drafts are shared for commenting

An important and legitimate part of the development of the assessment reports is to send drafts for commenting to all member governments and to experts. This is to ensure that the reports are objective and relevant, that the conclusions are understood in the way that the scientists intended, and that they are produced in an open and transparent way. This means that member governments can contribute with comments to the reports so that the knowledge in them, especially within the summary for policy makers, is relevant for the country's climate policy.

When a report is finally published, IPCC publishes all report drafts and comments from countries and experts.

The Norwegian Environment Agency is responsible for Norway's input and collects comments from various Norwegian authorities. These are technical and scientific comments, and it is important for the Agency to ensure that the reports thoroughly include scientific findings that are important nationally and internationally to achieve the targets set in the Paris Agreement, as well as national climate goals.

Comments about carbon capture and storage (CCS)

In the news article from BBC about leaked documents to the IPCC, comments regarding carbon capture and storage (CCS) are highlighted. Norway's comments to the drafts are linked to all knowledge areas covered by the reports, including the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) to take care of remaining CO2 emissions etc.


The BBC article can give the impression that Norway is lobbying for the IPCC to hide the message related to phasing out fossil fuels. This is not correct. On the contrary, we believe that such findings are very important and relevant for the work to meet the targets in the Paris Agreement and Norwegian climate goals. CCS is one of many actions described in the IPCC's reports, including the draft for Working Group III which will be published in March 2022.


The Norwegian Environment Agency's role is to contribute to the readability of the findings so that they are understandable, and that the reports become as relevant as possible as a scientific basis for climate policy, nationally and internationally.


It is relevant for Norway to comment on the differences between types of CCS projects, so that the reports could reflect relevant experiences from Norway. One example of this is since Norwegian domestic electricity supply already is renewable, new Norwegian CO2-mangement projects are related to industrial emissions and waste management, while CCS projects in other countries are largely related to fossil power plants. The Norwegian projects are therefore have other characteristics and are less connected to the energy systems and more to process emissions, and experiences from this is also useful to better understand how an ambitious climate policy can be implemented.