There is a 50% chance that the 1.5ºC warming projected for 2100 will actually be reached by 2031
Beyond the trail of new commitments and the avalanche of reports that all climate summits usually leave behind, COP27 left two particularly striking headlines, even if they seem contradictory to each other.
And there are two news: one good and the other bad. The bad news is that the planet only 9 years left to save the climate, really accelerating the emissions cut if you do not want to exceed the ‘extra’ warming of 1.5ºC on that date which, in theory, should not be reached until 2100. The good news is that, despite everything, three of the world’s biggest polluters (China, India and Europe) are moving towards decarbonization faster than expected.
The report released by the Global Carbon Project, a renowned global panel of more than 100 scientists that studies the impact of carbon on the global climate, has given a clear idea of how things stand. In short, according to this study, there is a 50% chance that within 9 years the fateful figure of 1.5ºC of warming will be exceeded compared to the pre-industrial era. That horizon was set for 2100, but not for the next decade, which only makes the forecast much worse.
That there is half the chance that this rise will take so long is practically playing Russian roulette, conclude the experts, who are committed to taking “radical and immediate & rdquor; so that the bullet does not touch us in that fateful game.
Emissions increase in 2022
In fact, the latest known data on warming do not exactly row in favor of the planet. In 2021, emissions rebounded after the parenthesis of the pandemic, and there was great expectation to know what would happen in 2022. Well, the estimates of the Global Carbon Project suggest that This year will end with a new rise in CO2 emissions, specifically 1% compared to 2021. It may seem like a small thing, but when immediate and drastic reductions are expected, any increase is a loss.
The culprit behind this increase in 2022 is the boom in the use of oil (its emissions are up 2.2%) and coal (1%), because those caused by gas are down 0.2% and those derived from use of cement, 1.6%. All experts agree that the post-pandemic aviation rebound It is one of the major responsible for this 1% global increase in emissions in 2022.
How do you know that we have nine years left to reach a rise of 1.5ºC? Crucially, the Global Carbon Project takes into account the number of gigatonnes of CO2 that are released into the atmosphere annually. Given that humanity will reach 1.5ºC warming as soon as another 380 gigatons of CO2 are released and only 40.6 will have been emitted by 2022, it is easy to calculate when that ‘reserve’ will be exhausted. of carbon dioxide that can still be released before reaching the fateful limit set by the Paris Agreement.
almost impossible mission
The authors of the report consider it unlikely that emissions can be curbed to the extent required in such a short time. In fact, to reach 2100 with a warming of ‘only’ 1.5ºC it would be necessary for each year until then to have declines similar to those recorded during the pandemic of Covid in the year 2020.
“We do not have green growth once Covid is over. We continue to have an increase fueled by the use of fossil fuels,” notes Philippe Ciais, a member of the Global Carbon Project.
For his part, the executive director of the Global Carbon Project and Chief Researcher at the CSIRO Climate Science Center in Canberra (Australia), Pep Canadell, was quite clear in a recent meeting with journalists: the world is heading towards warming of 2.4ºC by the end of the century. The difference between 1.5ºC and 2.4ºC can be abysmal, according to all scientific studies, which draw a truly bleak picture in the second case. And yet, it already seems the most probable.
If the emission of carbon into the atmosphere continues at the current rate during the next four or five years, the planet will exceed 2ºC. “We are going directly towards this scenario, even more than 2.4º & rdquor ;, she assured. And he added that current extreme weather events already anticipate the future: “Weather extremes are now going beyond what we had thought. Perhaps we have not imagined well what a world with 2º more will be like, ”Canadell warned.
Some glimmers of hope
But isn’t there positive news to hold on to? There are. On one side, the increase in emissions is not stopping, but it is slowing down. If during the 2000s it rose at an annual rate of 3%, in the last decade it has only risen at 0.5%. And, on the other hand, three of the largest CO2 emitters, China, India and Europe, are on track to achieve their decarbonisation targets earlier than they had initially anticipated in their national targets.
Another report, this one released by The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) and which coincides with other similar ones, details that China is giving an impressive boost to clean energy, which is why emissions will drop by 0.9% in 2022. However, there are other factors involved, such as the slowdown in its economy and the high rate of reforestation that the Asian giant is carrying out.
Also in India renewables are seeing a phenomenal takeoff. And, although this country continues to be highly dependent on coal (Indian emissions in 2022 rise by 6% compared to 2021), it is expected that within this same decade reductions of such a caliber will be observed that they turn the tortilla around, leaving the coal as marginal compared to renewables.
The third industrial power with significant reductions, the European Union will see its emissions drop by 0.8% in 2022, especially due to the drop in gas by 10%, linked to the war in Ukraine.
In the United States, however, they will increase by 1.5%, driven by the increase in gas consumption, used to get rid of coal. But the US is right now the second country, after China, that invests the most in solar and wind energy, to the point that by 2030 it will generate 85% of its energy through renewables.
The ECIU report finds that “Rapid price reductions mean wind and solar power are now much cheaper than fossil fuels & rdquor;a fact that encourages many governments and investors to row in that direction.
“The time frame is narrowing & rdquor;
Now, despite these glimmers of hope, experts stress that “the time frame is narrowing & rdquor ;. Promising hopes or commitments for the future are no longer enough, but concrete and immediate measures, and far-reaching.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) announced last month its forecast that fossil fuels will reach their peak consumption in the year 2030 and from there, it will begin to decline to be replaced by renewables. But the disappearance of hydrocarbons will not be abrupt and sudden, but a slow and gradual reduction, which will still cause a large volume of emissions into the atmosphere for many years.
Hence, the overall vision of the situation throws more shadows than lights on the future of humanity in the medium term.
Full Carbon Global Project report: https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/4811/2022/
ECIU report: https://eciu.net/analysis/reports/2022/the-big-four-are-major-emitters-downplaying-their-climate-and-clean-energy-progress
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