CO₂ emissions

Fossil fuel supply: the elephant in the room at climate change conferences

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Jordi Roca Jusmet, Universitat de Barcelona

“Natural resources … are a gift from God. Every natural resource, whether it’s oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, they are all natural resources. Countries should not be blamed for having them, and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them. The people need them.”

These were the words of Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan, at the opening of the recent United Nations COP29 convention on climate change in Baku. https://www.youtube.com/embed/4pqVwrMAGSc?wmode=transparent&start=0 Ilham Aliyev’s speech at COP29.

It seems completely inappropriate to sing the praises of fossil fuels at an international gathering that aims to radically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, this goal is absolutely unachievable without drastic cuts to fossil fuel use, but Aliyev’s speech does have a positive, if indirect, impact – it points a spotlight at the elephant in the room, one that has remained virtually invisible throughout the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) long history.

COP agreements have never made commitments to limit fossil fuel extraction, even though this would be the most direct – and the only certain – way to rein in the leading cause of climate change.

Reducing demand but not supply: a pointless endeavour

Fossil fuels are key to climate change, but they are largely absent from COP agreements. The biggest achievement came in 2023, at COP28 in Dubai (United Arab Emirates), when an unspecified proposal was made to “transition away from fossil fuels”. This was not ratified at COP29, mainly due to pressure from Saudi Arabia.

In economic terms, the focus of climate agreements has always been on demand. It is expected that national measures, such as promoting renewable energy and public transport, or penalising the use of fossil fuels by putting a price on carbon emissions will indirectly lead to less fossil fuels being put on the market.

While these measures can be effective, they often end up lacking, or even non-existent, because they depend completely on the policies and reactions of the nations and companies who own, supply, and profit from these resources.

Commitments to supply-side agreements are not on the COP agenda, even though most of the fossil fuel reserves that are considered exploitable – and therefore economically valuable – cannot be burned if we are to even come close to the UNFCCC climate goals. They must be left in the ground.

However, global CO₂ emissions are not falling. On the contrary, the use of coal, petroleum and natural gas have hit record highs in 2024.

Evolution of global CO₂ emissions. Global Carbon Project, CC BY-SA

How can we restrict fossil fuel extraction?

Limits have been put forward in the past. In 2014, for instance, economists Paul Collier and Anthony J. Venables proposed a sequenced plan for phasing out coal, which would involve progressive measures not to start new operations and to close mines, with countries staggered in a fair order. “Fairness” would be determined by ability to pay, per capita emissions and historical responsibility.

We can also take inspiration from nuclear weapons treaties, as Professor of International Relations Peter Newell and political economist Andrew Simms have done. They advocate for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty along the lines of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Many states and cities around the world have already signed up to the initiative.

There have also been local initiatives, such as the commitment to stop extracting oil in an area of the Yasuní National Park in Ecuador due to its exceptional biodiversity and the existence of populations in voluntary isolation. This will also benefit the global climate by reducing emissions.

The proposal was initially taken up in 2007 by the then president Rafael Correa on the condition that the international community would financially compensate part of the sacrificed monetary income. However, scarce contributions to the compensation fund led Correa to renounce the initiative and allow oil exploitation.

Environmentalists, affected communities and academics demanded a referendum and, after years of litigation, the right to consultation was recognised by the courts. In August 2023, a large majority (almost 60 %) voted in favour of keeping the oil reserves “in the ground indefinitely”. Money does not always prevail, even in poor countries, though the Ecuadorian government has postponed its mandate to dismantle drilling sites, meaning many are still operational today.

A blessing for some, a curse for others

The above case and many others – such as the Niger Delta (Nigeria), where Shell has been extracting oil since 1958 – remind us that “God’s gift” of natural resources can also be a curse.

A gift for some – usually multinational companies or small numbers of wealthy people – can be a curse not only for the planet, but also for the local population who suffer the devastating environmental and social consequences of extracting these resources, and who face violent repression when they protest.

It was in places like Nigeria and Ecuador that the activist slogan “leave fossil fuels in the ground” was coined. Even if their motivation is primarily or solely to protect their territory, social movements opposing coal mining or hydrocarbon extraction undeniably contribute – from the supply side – to curbing climate change.

Together with social movements, academic and political work is key to defining the areas where preventing the exploitation of fossil fuels is a priority, and to establishing economic compensation. Martí Orta-Martínez, from the University of Barcelona, is doing just this. He is leading a project to geographically define the fossil fuel deposits that should not be burned, which was presented at a seminar in the framework of COP29.

It may sound utopian to seek supply-side international agreements, but the truth is that it is impossible to reduce global emissions and move towards decarbonisation without a rapid decrease in the extraction of fossil fuels. COPs should heed this evidence.

Given the magnitude of the climate challenge, it is not a question of deciding between demand or supply-side policies, but of using both, promoting them in each country, and reaching robust agreements at an international level.

Jordi Roca Jusmet, Catedrático de Economía, Universitat de Barcelona

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Carbon budget for 1.5°C will run out in six years at current emissions levels – new research

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Chris Smith, University of Leeds and Robin Lamboll, Imperial College London

If humanity wants to have a 50-50 chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, we can only emit 250 another gigatonnes (billion metric tonnes) of CO₂. This effectively gives the world just six years to get to net zero, according to calculations in our new paper published in Nature Climate Change.

The global level of emissions is presently 40 gigatonnes of CO₂ per year. And, as this figure was calculated from the start of 2023, the time limit may be actually closer to five years.

Our estimate is consistent with an assessment published by 50 leading climate scientists in June and updates with new climate data many of the key figures reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in August 2021.

How much CO₂ can still be emitted while remaining under a certain level of warming is referred to as the “carbon budget”. The carbon budget concept works because the increase in Earth’s global mean surface temperature has increased in a linear fashion with the total amount of CO₂ people have emitted since the industrial revolution.

The other side of this equation is that, roughly speaking, warming stops when CO₂ emissions stop: in other words, at net zero CO₂. This explains why net zero is such an important concept and why so many countries, cities, and companies have adopted net zero targets.

We revised the remaining carbon budget down from the 500 gigatonnes reported by the the IPCC from the start of 2020. Some of this revision is merely timing: three years and 120 gigatonnes of CO₂ emissions later, the world is closer to the 1.5°C threshold. Improvements we made to the method for calculating budget adjustments shrank the remaining budget further.

Clearing the air

Alongside CO₂, humanity emits other greenhouse gases and air pollutants that contribute to climate change. We adjusted the budget to account for the projected warming caused by these non-CO₂ pollutants. To do this, we used a large database of future emissions scenarios to determine how non-CO₂ warming is related to total warming.

Some of the warming caused by greenhouse gases is offset by cooling aerosols such as sulphates – air pollutants that are emitted along with CO₂ from car exhausts and furnaces. Almost all emissions scenarios project a reduction in aerosol emissions in the future, regardless of whether fossil fuels are phased out or CO₂ emissions continue unabated. Even in scenarios where CO₂ emissions increase, scientists expect stricter air quality legislation and cleaner combustion.

Cars surrounded by exhaust fumes in traffic.
Scientists predict air pollution which cools the climate will decline in future.
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In its most recent report, the IPCC updated its best estimate of how much air pollution cools the climate. As a result, we expect that falling air pollution in future will contribute more to warming than previously assessed. This reduces the remaining 1.5°C budget by about another 110 gigatonnes.

Other updates we made to the carbon budget methodology tend to reduce the budget even more, such as projections of thawing permafrost that were not included in earlier estimates.

All is not lost

It is important to stress that many aspects of our carbon budget estimate are uncertain. The balance of non-CO₂ pollutants in future emissions scenarios can be as influential on the remaining carbon budget as different interpretations of how the climate is likely to respond.

We also do not know for sure whether the planet will really stop warming at net zero CO₂ emissions. On average, evidence from climate models tends to suggest it will, but some models show substantial warming continuing for decades after net zero is reached. If further warming after net zero is the case, the budget would be further reduced.

These uncertain factors are why we quote a 50/50 likelihood of limiting warming to 1.5°C at 250 gigatonnes of CO₂. A more risk-averse assessment would report a two-in-three chance of staying under 1.5°C with a remaining budget of 60 gigatonnes – or one-and-a-half years of current emissions.

Time is running out to limit global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. While we have revised the remaining carbon budget, the message from earlier assessments is unchanged: a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to halt climate change.

It looks less likely that we will limit warming to 1.5°C, but this does not mean that we should give up hope. Our update also revised the budget for 2°C downwards relative to the IPCC’s 2021 estimate, but by a smaller amount – from 1,350 to 1,220 gigatonnes, or from 34 to 30 years of current emissions. If current national climate policies are fully implemented (admittedly, an optimistic scenario), this may be enough to hold warming below 2°C.

The risks of triggering tipping points such as the dieback of the Amazon rainforest increase – sometimes sharply – with increasing warming, but 1.5°C itself is not a hard boundary beyond which climate chaos abounds.

A dry and cracked river bed with rainforest in the distance.
Tipping points in the Earth system could dramatically accelerate climate change.
Beto Santillan/Shutterstock

With effective action on emissions, we can still limit peak warming to 1.6°C or 1.7°C, with a view to bringing temperatures back below 1.5°C in the longer term.

This is a goal absolutely worth pursuing.

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Chris Smith, NERC-IIASA Collaborative Research Fellow, University of Leeds and Robin Lamboll, Research Fellow in Atmospheric Science, Imperial College London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue ReadingCarbon budget for 1.5°C will run out in six years at current emissions levels – new research