Tag Archives: climate crisis

Fossil Production Dangerously Out of Sync With Paris 1.5°C Limit

The UNEP 2021 Production Gap Report finds that governments’ fossil fuel production plans are dangerously out of sync with Paris limits. The Report “tracks the discrepancy between governments’ planned fossil fuel production and global production levels consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C or 2°C,” says the UNEP press release.

Fossils Out of Sync with Paris 1.5°C

“Despite increased climate ambitions and net-zero commitments, governments still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than what would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C and 45% more than consistent with limiting warming to 2°C,” according to the report.

The main findings include: (sourced from the press release)

The world’s governments plan to produce around 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C, and 45% more than consistent with 2°C. The size of the production gap has remained largely unchanged compared to our prior assessments.
Governments’ production plans and projections would lead to about 240% more coal, 57% more oil, and 71% more gas in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C.
Global gas production is projected to increase the most between 2020 and 2040 based on governments’ plans. This continued, long-term global expansion in gas production is inconsistent with the Paris Agreement’s temperature limits.
Countries have directed over USD 300 billion in new funds towards fossil fuel activities since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic — more than they have towards clean energy.
In contrast, international public finance for production of fossil fuels from G20 countries and major multilateral development banks (MDBs) has significantly decreased in recent years; one-third of MDBs and G20 development finance institutions (DFIs) by asset size have adopted policies that exclude fossil fuel production activities from future finance.
Verifiable and comparable information on fossil fuel production and support — from both governments and companies — is essential to addressing the production gap.

Click here to watch the Production Gap Report video

Meanwhile in Canada

In the report Canada shows up as the world’s fourth-biggest oil and gas producer, and global fossil fuel production in 2030 will still be more than double the amount that would match a 1.5°C climate pathway, according to the 2021 Production Gap Report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),” writes Mitchell Beer in The Energy Mix.

IEA calls for Faster Fossil Phaseout

In yet another recent article, Beer focused on the IEA’s (International Energy Agency) call for a much “faster fossil phaseout and more renewables investment to keep 1.5°C withing reach.” Current climate pledges “cover less than 20% of the gap in emissions reductions that needs to be closed by 2030 to keep a 1.5°C path within reach,” says the IEA World Energy Outlook report.”

To shift those trends, the IEA Report calls for: (excerpt from The Energy Mix)

• A doubling of countries’ current commitments to deploy photovoltaic solar and wind, along with a “huge buildout” of grid infrastructure, greater flexibility in electricity systems, more reliance on hydropower, a rapid coal phaseout, electrification of transportation and space heat, and “use of nuclear power where acceptable”;

• A “relentless” focus on energy efficiency, making better use of materials and shifting behaviours to speed the reduction in the amount of energy the global economy uses for each unit of output it produces;

• Rapid methane reductions as a “key tool to limit near-term global warming”;

• A “big boost” to clean energy innovation, focused on technologies like hydrogen, low-carbon fuels, and carbon capture, utilization, and storage—particularly to drive emission reductions in energy-intensive industries like steel and cement, and in long-haul transport. While “all the technologies needed to achieve deep emissions cuts to 2030 are available,” the IEA says, nearly half of the reductions required by 2050 “come from technologies that today are at the demonstration or prototype stage.”

“Every data point showing the speed of change in energy can be countered by another showing the stubbornness of the status quo…for all the advances being made by renewables and electric mobility, 2021 is seeing a large rebound in coal and oil use. Largely for this reason, it is also seeing the second-largest annual increase in CO2 emissions in history.” — IEA

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

Two Fatal Flaws with Net-Zero By 2050: Net-Zero and By 2050

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The “Net-Zero by 2050” fantasy is now the “de facto climate goal” writes Peter Kalmus in his latest Guardian opinion piece. “This is deadly procrastination,” he adds. Kalmus tweeted that there are two fatal flaws with “net-zero by 2050”. One is “net zero.” The other is “by 2050.” The net-zero craze has been embraced by world leaders, politicians of all stripes and even fossil fuel executives, which in itself is a big red flag.

Two Fatal Flaws

“These two flaws provide cover for big oil and politicians who wish to preserve the status quo. Together they comprise a deadly prescription for inaction and catastrophically high levels of irreversible climate and ecological breakdown.” — Peter Kalmus

“Net-Zero” is wishful thinking because it assumes a knock-out technological breakthrough on carbon capture that is nowhere on the horizon. The concept is a very useful distraction that “represents magical thinking rooted in our society’s technology fetish,” says Kalmus. “Net-Zero” is the new climate science denialism which is more subtle but yet more effective than the outright climate denial of previous years.

“By 2050” is the other fatal flaw. There is zero sense of urgency in a deadline that is three decades away. It leaves everybody off the hook. Individuals who are concerned about climate change—but not concerned enough to do something about it—find “by 2050” quite convenient, something they’ll get around to eventually. Elected leaders find the phrase very user-friendly—in the short term—because they’ll no longer be around to answer for their inaction on climate after their term in office.

My latest: There are two fatal flaws with “net zero by 2050.” One is “net zero.” The other is “by 2050”.https://t.co/yssrNNBOGQ

— Dr Peter Kalmus STOP LINE 3 (@ClimateHuman) September 10, 2021

So where do we go from here?

Empty commitments to Net-Zero by 2050 by the fossil fuel sector, the world’s big banks, governments and large corporations do nothing to tackle the climate crisis in the short or medium term. The recent code-red alert by the IPCC makes it abundantly clear that the world must transition away from high-carbon-emitting fossils starting immediately. We are running out of time.

Kalmus, and others like Canada’s Seth Klein, are calling for society to shift into emergency mode with a WWII herculean effort to tackle the climate crisis.

Kalmus points out that “any zero goal must be paired with a commitment to annual reductions leading steadily to this goal year by year, and binding plans across all levels of government to achieve those annual targets.” Forget “by 2050”. We should be looking at no later than 2035.

Plus we need to forget the “net” in “net zero”. Carbon capture and other negative emissions schemes will only “continue to provide the distraction and delay sought by the fossil fuel industry. It would be beyond foolish to gamble our planet on technologies that may never exist at scale,” according to Kalmus.

Klein has four markers for when you know that a government has shifted into emergency mode:

It spends what it takes to win;
It creates new economic institutions to get the job done;
It shifts from voluntary and incentive-based policies to mandatory measures;
It tells the truth about the severity of the crisis and communicates a sense of urgency about the measures necessary to combat it.

Our planet is being pummeled by the worsening impacts of climate change. Adults and world leaders have a deep moral obligation to not saddle the youth of the world with the climate failures of our generation.

(Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist and author of Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution.)

(Seth Klein is the head of the Climate Emergency Unit and author of The Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency.)

Rolly Montpellier @Below2C_
Roland (Rolly) Montpellier is the co-founder and Editor of Below2°C. He’s a climate activist, a climate communicator and a blogger. He’s a member of Climate Reality Canada, 350.Org (Ottawa), Citizens’ Climate Lobby (Canada) and climate ambassador for We Don’t Have Time. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin.

This work was first seen on Below2C and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Deadly Western Heat Dome was ‘Virtually Impossible’ without Climate Change

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Less than a week after a deadly “heat dome” devastated western Canada and the U.S. Pacific Northwest and burned Lytton, B.C. to the ground in early July, an international science team reported that the blistering conditions would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.

“Climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, made the heat wave at least 150 times more likely to happen,” the World Weather Attribution Network said in a release.

“An event such as the Pacific Northwest 2021 heat wave is still rare or extremely rare in today’s climate, yet would be virtually impossible without human-caused climate change,” the 27-member research team declared in a paper published late yesterday. “In the most realistic statistical analysis the event is estimated to be about a 1 in 1000 year event in today’s climate,” but “as warming continues, it will become a lot less rare.”

They add that the estimate of hundreds of premature deaths in the heat wave to date is “alarming”, but “likely a severe undercount” until health statisticians have a chance to review mortality data and factor in the impact for people with underlying conditions.

“What we are seeing is unprecedented,” said Friederike Otto, associate director of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute. “You’re not supposed to break records by four or five degrees Celsius (seven to nine degrees Fahrenheit). This is such an exceptional event that we can’t rule out the possibility that we’re experiencing heat extremes today that we only expected to come at higher levels of global warming.”

“While we expect heat waves to become more frequent and intense, it was unexpected to see such levels of heat in this region,” added Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, senior researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. “It raises serious questions whether we really understand how climate change is making heat waves hotter and more deadly.”

The study results, based on a comparison with historical climate records, “provide a strong warning: our rapidly warming climate is bringing us into uncharted territory that has significant consequences for health, well-being, and livelihoods,” the scientists said. “Adaptation and mitigation are urgently needed to prepare societies for a very different future. Adaptation measures need to be much more ambitious and take account of the rising risk of heat waves around the world, including surprises such as this unexpected extreme.”

And “greenhouse gas mitigation goals should take into account the increasing risks associated with unprecedented climate conditions if warming would be allowed to continue.”

Every heat wave that takes place today “is made more likely and more intense by climate change,” the WWAN release explained. But this time, “the extreme temperatures experienced were far outside the range of past observed temperatures, making it difficult to quantify exactly how rare the event is in the current climate and would have been without human-caused climate change.”

They did, however, conclude that it would have been “virtually impossible” without the climate-warming impacts of human activity.

The review covered a stretch of B.C., Oregon, and Washington State that included the cities of Vancouver, Portland, and Seattle, with a combined population of more than nine million people who sweltered and suffered through temperatures as high as 49.6°C. It looked at the “slow-moving strong high pressure system” that settled in over the area, bringing warm, dry air along with clear skies that led to higher near-surface temperatures.

The science team came up with two possible pathways by which climate change made the extraordinary heat more likely. One possibility is that climate change, combined with the heat dome plus pre-existing drought, made the heat wave more likely, but still a “very unusual event,” the release states. The second is that the global climate system “has crossed a non-linear threshold where a small amount of overall global warming is now causing a faster rise in extreme temperatures than has been observed so far.”

The scientists called for further research to sort out which interpretation is right.

“Based on this first rapid analysis, we cannot say whether this was a so-called ‘freak’ event…that largely occurred by chance, or whether our changing climate altered conditions conducive to heat waves in the Pacific Northwest, which would imply that ‘bad luck’ played a smaller role and this type of event would be more frequent in our current climate,” the scientists write.

But “in either case, the future will be characterized by more frequent, more severe, and longer heat waves, highlighting the importance of significantly reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the amount of additional warming.”

While the Attribution Network focused its attention on the western heat dome, a new modelling study published this week in the journal Nature Communications points to greenhouse gas emissions and land use changes as “a key factor in extreme precipitation events such as flooding and landslides around the world,” The Guardian reports.

“Up till now, work in this field has been restricted to countries, rather than applied globally,” the news story explains. In the new study, a UCLA research team used machine learning to tell a wider story. “By examining multiple data sets of observed precipitation, the researchers were able to build a global picture, and found evidence of human activity affecting extreme precipitation in all of them.”

While some areas see increased drought as a result of climate change, “the dominant mechanism [driving extreme precipitation] for most regions around the world is that warmer air can hold more water vapour,” said lead researcher Gavin Madakumbura. “This fuels storms.”

Reprinted with permissions from The Energy Mix.

Bill C-12 Is A Nice Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act

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Mightydrake/Wikimedia Commons

Environmental groups were celebrating, a climate champion in the Canadian Senate was optimistic, and one of the country’s highest-profile fossil senators appeared to be onboard after the country’s new climate accountability legislation, Bill C-12, cleared the House of Commons earlier this week and looked likely to receive Senate approval before Parliament shuts down for the summer.

The week had been shaping up as a last-minute moment for the bill, with speculation rampant that the minority Parliament will be dissolved for a federal election this fall. When a parliamentary session ends, all leftover legislation dies on the order paper unless it’s reintroduced in a subsequent session.

Climate groups had been pressing for C-12 to be strengthened and adopted. On Wednesday, they were cheering after the bill passed the House of Commons Tuesday night.

That’s a Nice Bill ‘Ya Got There, Canada

It really wouldn’t make one bit of difference if the bill “dies on the order paper” because it isn’t a binding contract that would penalize us in any way. It’s a nice bill, and Canada can say “we’re sorry” when it’s broken. Canada hasn’t reached any of its environmental targets in the past, and there isn’t anything forcing them to abide by this one. It just makes us feel good.

THREAD: How we can make #BillC12 a bold and ambitious climate law.#C12 is a new legislation that could finally help Canada meet all of its climate goals. But there’s a problem: it doesn’t actually hold the government legally accountable to targets.

It needs 3 key amendments👇 pic.twitter.com/To9KRqb1hM

— Leadnow (@leadnowca) January 27, 2021

A new study co-authored by NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), says Earth is warming much faster than expected, with the amount of trapped heat from the sun approximately doubling between 2005 and 2019. The 10 warmest years in the 141-year record have occurred since 2005, with the seven most recent years being the warmest.

Hunger, drought and disease will afflict tens of millions more people within decades and reports from the G7 get-together in June, saw other countries beside Canada making pledges. At the same time, Canada poured over $18 billion into supporting fossil fuel companies since the start of the pandemic. It seems they pretty well made a mockery over the IPCC reports.

Luckily, Steve Colbert may have found the best use for the G7.

Before I order these figures, does anyone know if you can take them out and play with them or are they glued to the display stand? pic.twitter.com/vLVS1QfjEa

— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) June 12, 2021

The Climate Crisis we’re inevitably facing has already shown us we need more than promises to be accountable. They’ve only been a band-aide to console the public that action is taken seriously. Behind closed doors, the government has been entertaining fossil fuel lobbyists and doling out the dough to help support their rich, foreign owned companies. Meanwhile — the world suffers.

Alberta Government’s Objections No Longer Matter after IEO Roadmap, ‘Cataclysmic’ Week for Oil

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Alberta’s predictably hostile, defensive reaction to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) landmark Net Zero by 2050 roadmap shows it no longer matters what the Kenney government or its fossil industry allies think about the drive to decarbonize the global economy and hold average global warming to 1.5°C.

The IEA’s call for no future investment in new fossil infrastructure was reinforced scarcely a week later, when three of the world’s biggest oil companies faced deeply humbling challenges from the courts and their own shareholders.

The combined impact is crystal clear: If Alberta’s own policy-makers don’t move to diversify the province’s economy and plan for a managed fossil fuel decline, financial and other institutions that make future project development possible will make the decision for them.

Oil Demand to Fall 75%

One pivotal paragraph in the IEA’s 224-page report heralds an unfamiliar, new world for Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, and any other jurisdiction that has centred its economy on oil, gas and coal.

“Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway, and no new coal mines or mine extensions are required,” the IEA writes. “The unwavering policy focus on climate change in the net-zero pathway results in a sharp decline in fossil fuel demand, meaning that the focus for oil and gas producers switches entirely to output—and emissions reductions—from the operation of existing assets.”

Continuing to pour money into “junk investments” in oil and gas could throw countries off their carbon reduction targets, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol told Sky News.

And that’s just the beginning. The IEA scenario has all coal- and oil-fired power plants phased out by 2040—just around the corner for an industry whose multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects are built and financed to last decades. The only exceptions will be facilities that can take on the added cost of carbon-capture technologies that are as yet expensive and unreliable.

Related — The Slow Painful Death of Fossil Fuel

The report shows oil demand falling 75% between 2020 and 2050, to 24 million barrels per day, with OPEC nations providing 52% of a “much-reduced global oil supply” and production becoming “increasingly concentrated in a small number of low-cost producers.” Gas demand is expected to fall 55%.

With Alberta well-recognized as an expensive producer, “this will have a significant impact on the price and therefore production levels of oil and gas,” said Pembina Institute Alberta Director Chris Severson-Baker. And “purchasers of oil and gas products will increasingly direct their spending to oil and gas produced with the lowest upstream emissions.”

A ‘Cataclysmic Day’ for Oil and Gas Companies

The fossil fuel industry and its political allies could have been forgiven for imagining the worst was behind them once the IEA had issued its report. That was before a flurry of court and shareholder decisions on May 26 that The Guardian declared a “cataclysmic day” for oil and gas companies.

In the space of 24 hours, a court in The Hague ordered Royal Dutch Shell—whose greenhouse-gas emissions would make it the world’s fourth-biggest carbon polluter if it were a country—to boost its 2030 emissions-reduction target from 20 to 45%. Hedge fund Engine No. 1 won two seats on the ExxonMobil board with a challenge to the company’s shoddy response to the climate crisis. And shareholders representing 61% of Chevron stock instructed the company to address the downstream Scope 3 emissions that result when customers use its product as directed.

“Game-changer is an overused metaphor, but surely this is one,” said U.S. Environmental Defense Fund president Fred Krupp.

“This will be seen in retrospect as the day when everything changed for Big Oil,”

“This will be seen in retrospect as the day when everything changed for Big Oil,” Andrew Logan, senior director, oil and gas at shareholder advocacy non-profit Ceres, told the Financial Times. “How the industry chooses to respond to this clear signal will determine which companies thrive through the coming transition and which wither.”

“It wasn’t just a bad day for Big Oil. It was a great day for life on Earth,” added U.S. climate journalist Emily Atkin. “It offered proof that fossil fuel CEOs aren’t the sole deciders of who gets to live and thrive on future planet Earth.”

Speaking with the New York Times, University of Alberta energy and environmental economist Andrew Leach said the legal and shareholder action raised a provocative question for the Alberta industry: “What does my business model look like in a net-zero world? That’s where things get really complex.”

A ‘Stunning Evolution’

But even before last week’s news, the IEA’s new roadmap marked a stunning evolution for an international agency formed in 1974 to protect the interests of oil-consuming countries. Fossil fuel companies could routinely count on IEA analysis to justify their often fevered claims that oil and gas demand will continue growing through 2040 or beyond.

Until now, the IEA’s fossil-fuel-friendly analysis has had a severe, damaging impact on international climate action. In the five years since the Paris Agreement was signed, 60 of the world’s biggest banks invested US$3.8 trillion in new fossil fuel projects—largely because the IEA told them they could.

While the Paris-based agency styled its annual World Energy Outlook (WEO) as the “gold standard of energy analysis,” IEA watchers said the agency’s work was giving cover and legitimacy to new fossil fuel infrastructure. IEA analysts steadfastly maintained the WEO was a projection, not a prediction. And they cast the Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS), a secondary energy projection recently added to the agency’s annual outlook, as being compliant with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

But “if you look at oil and gas company annual reports, you’ll see constant references to IEA scenarios, including references to the SDS, claiming that even in the IEA’s climate scenario, we need to keep investing in new oil and gas fields,” Oil Change International analyst Kelly Trout said in an interview. Now “there will be a shift. If companies are serious about 1.5°, they’d better adjust their plans to the IEA’s new scenario that actually aligns with that.”

The New ‘Gold standard’

Just as important as the IEA’s top-line conclusion—and just as challenging for Alberta’s vision of a fossil fuel future—was a tectonic change in the agency’s modelling approach.

“This is a backcast, not a forecast, and that’s a major shift,” Corporate Knights Research Director Ralph Torrie said in an interview. Typically, forecasters start with historical fossil fuel consumption and investment trends, project them into the future, and decide how far they dare bend the curve. This time, the IEA’s analysts situated themselves in 2050, cast their minds back to today, and asked themselves what could realistically be done to get from here to there.

“Asking what has to happen to stay within 1.5°C is a real game-changer,” Torrie said. “That question makes a world of difference in where you end up, because now you have no choice but to push really hard on anything that will help you get to 1.5.”

Which means that, after steadily relying on the IEA’s analysis to justify a carbon-intensive industrial strategy that subjects their province to dizzying economic booms and busts, Alberta politicians suddenly had to react to an agency intent on tackling a crisis even more dangerous to humanity than the COVID-19 pandemic.

They didn’t take it well.

Fair-Weather Friends

Sonya Savage, Minister of Energy and Deputy House Leader

The IEA’s net-zero roadmap is “unreasonable,” “unfeasible,” and “driven by activists,” Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage, a former pipeline executive, said in a statement.

The notion that the IEA, with a solid complement of former fossil fuel industry staffers on its roster, is “driven by activists” would no doubt come as news to Alok Sharma. He’s the minister in British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government who’s set to chair this year’s United Nations climate change conference, COP26. The Net Zero by 2050 roadmap was commissioned by the COP presidency.

And just last year, Savage was happy enough to amplify the IEA’s findings, citing the WEO as “proof” that the world’s energy markets will continue to demand oil “decades” into the future.

It remains to be seen how quickly the IEA’s new analysis and the reactions to the court and shareholder action will filter through the global finance and investment community. But the message is crystal clear.

“Finance institutions can no longer justify lending, underwriting, insuring or investing in coal, gas, or oil expansion projects, or the infrastructure that facilitates that expansion,” Adam Scott, director of Toronto-based Shift Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health, said in an interview. “This isn’t an optional pathway. It’s a roadmap showing the direction we must take in order to prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis from becoming reality.”

As that realization dawns, Savage, Kenney and their colleagues will, of course, still be free to stand their ground. But no one will believe them. And sooner or later, oilpatch voters will begin to notice the rest of the world prospering from the shift to a decarbonized future and ask why their province is being left behind.

This article by The Energy Mix publisher Mitchell Beer first appeared on Policy Options and is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.

Steve MacLellan

Ramble On

Tag Archives: climate crisis

Fossil Production Dangerously Out of Sync With Paris 1.5°C Limit

Two Fatal Flaws with Net-Zero By 2050: Net-Zero and By 2050

Deadly Western Heat Dome was ‘Virtually Impossible’ without Climate Change

Bill C-12 Is A Nice Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act

Alberta Government’s Objections No Longer Matter after IEO Roadmap, ‘Cataclysmic’ Week for Oil