Climate scientists hail 2023 as ‘beginning of the end’ for fossil fuel era | Climate crisis

Global efforts to slow a runaway climate catastrophe may have reached a critical milestone in the past year with the peak of global carbon emissions from energy use, according to experts.

A growing number of climate analysts believe that 2023 could be recorded as the year in which annual emissions peak before the global fossil fuel economy begins a terminal decline.

The milestone is seen as a crucial tipping point in the race to bring emissions to net zero. But for many climate experts, this is an inflection point that was put in place years ago and which, while encouraging, falls far short of the rapid reductions the world needs.

The world’s leading climate scientists have consistently warned that the build-up of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere means it is critical to cut emissions before 2030 if leaders hope to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. to keep The rate at which emissions will need to be reduced will, according to most experts, require global transformation on a scale that is not yet in the pipeline.

“We can take a little pause to celebrate this tipping point,” said Dave Jones, a director at the climate think tank Ember. “But in a way it’s worrying that we’re still talking about when emissions might peak. The reality of the situation is that we need deep and rapid reductions in emissions if we hope to stay within the vanishingly small carbon budget that remains.”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) raised hopes of an end to the fossil fuel era earlier this year when it predicted for the first time that consumption of oil, gas and coal would peak before 2030 and begin to decline as climate policy in take effect.

“It’s not a question of ‘if’, it’s just a question of ‘how soon’ – and the sooner the better for all of us,” said Fatih Birolthe head of the IEA.

To understand how the world may have already reached an end to rising global emissions, just two years after one of the steepest emissions increases in history it helps to look at the global electricity sector.

“The world is reeling at the peak of power sector emissions,” said Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, the lead author of a report by Ember. Earlier this year, the report found that emissions from the generation of electricity flatlined over the first half of 2023 and may be ready to drop from next year.

The report studied power generation across 78 countries representing 92% of global electricity demand. It found a 16% increase in the amount of solar power generated and a 10% jump in global wind power output.

In the IEA’s flagship report, widely regarded as one of the most influential in the climate and energy debate, it found that the steady rise of wind and solar power was on course to outpace the world’s growing demand for energy – which means that renewable energy will begin to displace fossil fuels on a global scale.

At the same time, the deployment of electric vehicles worldwide is expected to start eroding demand for road fuel, which accounts for around 50% of oil demand in developed countries.

These trends have accelerated since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused a surge in the commodity price of gas and oil in 2022 and spurred a renewed focus on securing domestic sources of clean energy instead.

In one scenario put forward by the IEA, based on the declared policies of world governments, it found that emissions could peak as soon as this year before beginning a slow decline. The IEA is careful to say that none of its scenarios should be considered a prediction. The “pronounced policies” scenario is one of the more reliable barometers of what the future may hold because it is based on “a detailed overview of the current policy landscape”, or in other words, what governments do rather than what they say they will do.

The findings are backed up by a number of separate studies, all from well-respected energy authorities, which paint a picture of a world at the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.

An analysis of China’s carbon emissions – the highest in the world and more than the emissions of the US, India and Russia combined – found that they could peak this year before falling into a structural decline by 2024. The study was undertaken by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air for Carbon Brieffound that China’s rollout of wind and solar power this year was faster than expected and could eclipse the country’s growing energy appetite.

A peak in China’s emissions this year was also found by Climate Analytics, a climate policy institute, which predicted that an emissions peak for the world’s most energy-hungry nation could push the world to an emissions “tipping point” in 2023.

Dr Neil Grant, an author of the report, said: “For years, growth in energy demand has outstripped the deployment of renewables, despite record additions of wind and solar. We are now approaching the tipping point, where renewables outpace demand growth and coal, start displacing oil and gas. That would be the beginning of the end for the fossil economy.”

However, there is a note of caution in the forecast. Claire Fyson, another author of the Climate Analytics report, warned that existing trends of rising renewables and electric cars would need to continue to bring emissions down.

“It won’t just happen by itself,” Fyson said. “Technologies often follow an ‘S’ curve where they really take off, but over time their progress can be slower. You need government policy to continue to incentivize renewable energy and [disincentivise] fossil fuels.”

Not everyone agrees that fossil fuels have reached the beginning of the end. Some of the biggest oil producers in the world have publicly stated that demand for oil – and emissions – show no sign of abating.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said earlier this year that energy-related carbon emissions will continue to rise, in line with growing global demand for oil, until 2050. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opul) also predicted that global oil demand will continue to grow to 2045, albeit at a slower pace than in recent years.

“I think you have to think about the motives behind these projects,” Fyson said. “It is in Opul’s best interest to predict an increase in oil demand.”

Strong oil demand forecasts can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. They can encourage governments to support further oil and gas exploration to avoid a shortage, which in turn can lead to lower oil commodity prices if there is more oil and gas than is needed. This creates a disincentive to switch from a fossil fuel vehicle or heating system to an electric alternative if it is cheaper to use gas or oil.

Opul has consistently underestimated the deployment of electric vehicles in its official forecasts, which are used by governments to inform their policies, according to experts. Its predictions for the number of electric vehicles on the road by 2022 were too low by almost 60% on average over the period 2015-2021, according to a recent report by Zero Carbon Analytics. In 2021, the cartel’s predictions for the global electric vehicle fleet just one year ahead were 49% wrong, the report found.

Amy Kong, the author of the report, said the forecasts were “wildly wrong year after year” in what appeared to be a “underhand effort by oil producers to persuade investors and governments that fossil fuels have a future”.

Even in a world of declining fossil fuels and carbon emissions, there is a clear risk of not moving fast enough to reduce emissions in time to prevent global warming of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, according to climate experts.

The United Nations Environment Program estimates that for the world to have a chance of keeping global warming below the 1.5C target set out in the Paris Agreement, emissions will need to fall by around 9% each year. For context, emissions fell by 5.4% when the Covid-19 pandemic brought global economies to a standstill in 2020 before starting to rise again.

Big strides will need to be made to address the world’s record high carbon emissions, but from next year there is a good chance they will at least be moving in the right direction.