Bold Pathways Point to a Low Carbon Future

By Alex Kirby, Climate News NetworkThis piece first appeared at Climate News Network.

LONDON — Scientists often hesitate to give a cut-and-dried, yes-or-no answer when asked how serious climate change is going to be, and whether the world can still escape significant damage.

Surprisingly, perhaps, a report prepared for a UN conference in September is unequivocal. Yes, it says — the worst is not bound to happen.

The good news is that the world can keep climate change within what are thought to be acceptable limits. The less good news is that while it is possible, it certainly won’t be easy.

The report shows how the countries that emit the most greenhouse gases (GHGs) can cut their carbon emissions by mid-century to prevent dangerous climate change. Prepared by independent researchers in 15 countries, it is the first global co-operation to identify practical pathways to a low-carbon economy by 2050.

The Deep Decarbonisation Pathways Project (DDPP) report is an interim version prepared for the UN Climate Summit to be held in New York on 23 September. The full DDPP report will be ready in the spring of 2015.

Dangerous change

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, said the report tried to show how countries could help to achieve the globally-agreed target of limiting temperature rise to below 2°C. “Ambitious national action is critical to averting dangerous climate change,” he said. “This report shows what is possible.”

The report aims to help countries to set bold targets in the run-up to the UN climate talks to be held in Paris in 2015.

The work is led by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), an initiative of Columbia University’s Earth Institute for the UN, and the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), a policy research institute based in Paris.

Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the SDSN, said the world had committed itself to limit warming to below 2°C, but not to practical ways of achieving that goal.

He said: “This report is all about the practicalities. Success will be tough — the needed transformation is enormous — but is feasible, and is needed to keep the world safe for us and for future generations.”

Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, said: “The issue is to convince the world that the future is as important as the present. Paris 2015 may well be our last hope.”

Despite the global agreement to stay below 2°C, the world is on a path that, without action, will lead to an increase of 4°C or more. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its Fifth Assessment Report, known as AR5, that such a rise might exceed the world’s ability to adapt.

It said that a 4°C rise could endanger harvests and cause drastic sea-level rise, spread of diseases, and the extinction of ecosystems.

Some leading climate scientists — including NASA’s former chief climate scientist, Professor James Hansen, who is now at Columbia University — say that even a 2°C rise would be very dangerous. But many politicians regard it as an essential commitment.

The 15 national pathways examined in the report all show the importance of three factors for achieving radically lower carbon emissions.

The first is greatly increased efficiency and conservation in all energy use.

Renewable sources

The second factor is taking the carbon out of electricity by using renewable sources, “such as wind and solar, as well as nuclear power, and/or the capture and sequestration of carbon emissions from fossil-fuel burning”.

Nuclear energy still attracts widespread and determined opposition, and carbon capture and sequestration (trapping CO2 emissions and storing them underground or beneath the sea floor) has not yet proved that it can work on a commercial scale.

The third factor involves replacing fossil fuels in transport, heating and industrial processes with a mix of low-carbon electricity, sustainable biofuels, and hydrogen.

The authors say their interim report shows the critical long-term importance of preparing national deep decarbonisation plans for 2050.

Emmanuel Guerin, the DDPP’s senior project manager, said the pathways were crucial to shaping the expectations of countries, businesses and investors.