Tackling climate change by achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid century is “the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced,” yet it is something the world can still achieve, the world’s leading energy body said today, for the first time unveiling its own roadmap for reaching the critical target.
To achieve this, the International Energy Agency said that countries must halt all investment in new fossil fuel supply projects, and greenlight no new coal plants.
Among the climate “milestones” laid out by the IEA are the demand to achieve zero emissions from electricity generation in rich countries by 2035, and the rest of the world by 2040. The agency says wealthy nations then have another five years to reach net zero emissions from all energy use, with the rest of the world achieving that target by 2050.
Some of the keys to achieving this, the IEA said, would be:
- “Unparalleled” investment in renewable energy and clean energy, “… with governments putting R&D, demonstration and deployment at the core of energy and climate policy”
- Setting “near-term milestones” to bring countries on track to achieve longer-term targets
- Unprecedented levels of international cooperation between governments
But the boldest assertion from the IEA was the pronouncement that, for its plan to work, there should be “no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway, and no new coal mines or mine extensions are required.” Additionally, the plan states: “By 2035, there are no sales of new internal combustion engine passenger cars, and by 2040, the global electricity sector has already reached net-zero emissions.”
This unequivocal statement on the future of fossil fuels from the world’s top energy body received a warm welcome from climate advocates, and will almost certainly have major consequences for energy markets. Such was the excitement surrounding the report that, at the time of writing, the IEA’s page for the roadmap appeared to have crashed.
“Our roadmap shows the priority actions that are needed today to ensure the opportunity of net-zero emissions by 2050—narrow but still achievable—is not lost,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol. “The scale and speed of the efforts demanded by this critical and formidable goal—our best chance of tackling climate change and limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—make this perhaps the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced.”
Chris Smith, a researcher at the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, explained why the report is significant.
“Remaining under the ambitious 1.5°C warming level set out by the Paris Agreement will need an unprecedented shift in our energy systems over the next 30 years,” Smith told me. “The International Energy Agency, as the world authority on country-level energy technology trends and markets, is best-placed to assess the feasibility of making the transition to net zero CO2.”
Smith agreed that the path to net zero is challenging, but suggested there were avenues the IEA had not discussed that could offer further hope for achieving that ambition. “The key driver of reducing emissions, reducing global energy demand, remains underexplored,” he said. “While the final world energy demand in the IEA’s net zero 2050 scenario is below today’s levels, it is still more than twice the energy requirements for all of the 10 billion people projected to be alive in 2050 to have a decent quality of life. Reducing global energy demand beyond this level will make meeting 1.5°C less challenging, and provides some extra headroom if another of the key 1.5°C pillars is more difficult to achieve than is set out in the roadmap.”
A market update from IEA last week showed that renewable energy grew at a record pace throughout 2020, despite the coronavirus pandemic. In total, the world’s renewable electricity capacity grew 45% to 280 gigawatts (GW). The IEA said such increases would now be the “new normal,” with another 280 GW of renewables expected to be added in 2022 alone.
Dave Jones, global lead at climate research think-tank Ember, applauded the IEA’s progress in producing its own roadmap for decarbonization. “This is the real deal—a comprehensive vision for net zero,” he said. “It is 1.5-degree aligned, and it’s based on mostly reasonable assumptions compared to scenarios analyzed by the IPCC [the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], and does not gamble our future on risky technologies.”
Jones added that the most remarkable part of the report was the pronouncement on fossil fuels. “The implications of that sentence are far-reaching,” he said. “This is truly a knife into the fossil fuel industry.”
Meanwhile, Gail Whiteman, professor of sustainability at the University of Exeter Business School, told me she welcomed the report, but sounded a note of caution.
“It is encouraging to see that the new IEA report launched today explicitly recognizes the need for a radical transformation of the energy system with the pathway described in this report using a target of net zero by 2045 for developed countries, and globally 2050, with a critical end to new oil and gas fields now,” Whiteman said.
However, she noted that also today, oil multinational Shell is hosting its annual general meeting. The company, Whiteman told me, was “offering a far less feasible option in the Shell 1.5C Sky scenario, which continues to rely unrealistically on negative emissions technologies and massive, and wholly unrealistic, offsets through tree planting which requires a new forest the size of Brazil. This kind of disconnect is confusing and downright dangerous. We cannot have major energy companies out of sync with scientific thinking.”
“At the end of the day, for the IEA pathway to 1.5 Celsius to have value, the world will need to stop believing in unicorns and listen and act upon the science,” she concluded.
Whiteman and her colleague Tim Lenton, Director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, recently completed a paper with other researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who revealed that out of over 400 climate scenarios envisaged by researchers, as of now only 20 remaining pathways could achieve the 1.5 Celsius limit of warming as recommended by the Paris Agreement.
Lenton welcomed the report, noting that it represents an important shift for the IEA, which at one time was seen as a cheerleader for the fossil fuel sector. He told me the report “represents something of a tipping point for the IEA. An organisation that has been rightly criticised in the past for systematically underestimating the growth of renewable power and overestimating future demand for fossil fuels, is now saying that rapidly accelerating growth of renewable power is the answer, and there is no need for new fossil fuel exploration.”
Also welcome, Lenton said, was the IEA’s new understanding that large scale green investment would bring clean energy to all and boost economic growth. “It is sad that it has taken so long for the IEA to work this out,” he said, “but at least they have now joined a growing global consensus. The IEA’s position is crucial to setting worldwide expectations of our energy future. As such we can all hope that the IEA’s tipping point in its view of the future will lead to much needed positive tipping points of practical action to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.”
It remains to be seen how nations will rise to the challenge set out by the IEA. European nations have been steadily upping their ambition on decarbonization goals, with Spain last week approving a new climate law that placed an immediate ban on all new fossil fuel exploration. The law also commits the country to cutting emissions 23% by 2030 from 1990 levels, and demands renewables make up 74% of electricity generation by 2030.
Meanwhile, Germany’s Angela Merkel on the weekend rejected a call to bring forward its 2038 end date for the use of coal, saying “Those affected need some reliability on the path to climate neutrality.” Under a new draft law, Europe’s largest economy will commit to an emissions cut of 65% by 2030 from 1990 levels, and net zero by 2045, following last month’s ruling by Germany’s top court that the country’s existing climate legislation was in part unconstitutional. That case was brought by a coalition of climate campaigners including Fridays For Future, the strike movement made famous by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.