In a major report scheduled to be released on Monday, the Paris-based International Energy Agency – which provides independent analysis and has 29 member countries, including the United States – says that national commitments to cut greenhouse gases are ambitious but insufficient to keep the world below two degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels.
At the same time, the agency will offer a path forward, showing how the world, with a bit more ambition, could peak its emissions by 2020 and get on a safer path.
Since 2010, the two-degree target has been a central feature of international attempts to stave off the worst consequences of global warming. It is central to a major December meeting in Paris organized under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, where it is hoped that countries will agree on global emissions reductions.
In advance of December’s Paris meeting, many nations have submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, detailing their plans to limit emissions. The United States has pledged to reduce its emissions 26 to 28 percent below its 2005 levels by 2025. The European Union is widely regarded as having one of the most ambitious goals – a cut of 40 percent or more below 1990 levels by 2030.
The IEA analysis took into account INDCs submitted by May 14 and analyzed announced climate policies of nations such as China that have not submitted them. It found that in the absence of further actions, current commitments alone will not keep the world below the two-degree threshold.
“If stronger action is not forthcoming after 2030, the path in the INDC Scenario would be consistent with an average temperature increase of around 2.6°C by 2100 and 3.5°C after 2200,” the report says.
The IEA is not the first organization to suggest that the world is off its target — other analyses have reached similar conclusions – but its analysis is probably the most definitive.
“What IEA says is consistent with other analyses, but I think this adds a lot of weight because of their reach and their reputation in the energy world,” said Nathaniel Keohane, vice president for international climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.
Economic growth between 2013 and 2030 will be 88 percent, the agency projects. At the same time, the world’s emissions from energy use will grow 8 percent under a scenario that takes the INDCs into account. That would represent a substantial “decoupling” of economic growth from carbon dioxide emissions at a time when renewables are the top electricity source.
“All in all, it looks like a significantly different energy picture than today,” Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, said in an interview.
However, the IEA says, it’s not enough.
“With the INDCs submitted so far, and the planned energy policies in countries that have yet to submit, the world’s estimated remaining carbon budget consistent with a 50% chance of keeping the rise in temperature below 2°C is consumed by around 2040 – eight months later than is projected in the absence of INDCs,” the IEA report says.
One reason is that there would still be a lot of fossil energy online — “inefficient coal-fired power generation capacity declines only slightly” in the 2030 scenario outlined by the IEA.
The agency calls for stronger steps to cut emissions, including a global peak in energy emissions by 2020 and a process to check where nations are on their goals every five years.
The peak, in particular, is crucial. “This is the only way that we still have chances to reach our climate goals,” Birol said.
The emphasis on a peak is a refreshing way of looking at what the world needs to achieve, said Keohane, who is familiar with the IEA report. “For us to get to any long-term stabilization target, the first thing we have to do is turn the corner on emissions,” he said. “The peak, that’s something that can happen in the near term and get us on the right trajectory.”
The IEA said that the world can peak emissions by 2020 by pursuing five policies simultaneously: ramping up renewables, ramping down coal use, investing heavily in energy efficiency, cutting fossil-fuel subsidies, and quickly capping emissions of the hard-hitting but short-lived climate pollutant methane.
Given how difficult two degrees will be to meet, it is rather striking to contemplate that many nations — especially many developing countries with lower levels of emissions – prefer a 1.5-degree target, calling it considerably safer.
But that would be harder to achieve. A recent study in Nature Climate Change found that to hit that target, it would be necessary to first overshoot it and then move backward through “negative emissions” technologies — hopefully to be widely available later this century — that pull carbon dioxide back out of the air.
“It would be ideal if Paris could come up with an agreement that [gets to two degrees],” Birol said. “However, if it doesn’t get there, it shouldn’t be considered as a failure if the important cornerstones are put in place, especially around the energy sector, to give the right signal to the investors.”
