Combating climate change
Goals for the coming years
Just as the United States is in the process of pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, US government data revealed that the need for action to stem global warming is as urgent as ever. US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) both published separate reports last month that indicate that 2017 was among the three warmest years since 1880, when record-keeping began. NASA calculations show that globally averaged temperatures in 2017 were 0.90 degrees Celsius (1.62 degrees Fahrenheit) above the arithmetic mean of the 1951–1980 years. According to the NOAA analysis, average temperature was 0.84 degrees Celsius (1.51 degrees F) above the 20th century average. In light of these alarming trends, what can be done, and how are various stakeholders responding to these renewed challenges? Unfortunately, there is not much encouraging news on combating climate change. While signatories to the Paris Agreement met twice since December 2015, progress on its implementation and finance has been slow, and emissions of carbon show no signs of levelling off.
Between 2014–16, for three years, emissions remained steady at over 32.1 metric gigatons of CO2 each year, but now appear to be rising again."Three years without emissions growth is notable, but it needs to be turned into a decline," said Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research-Oslo in Norway.
It is too early to judge whether the cause of combating climate change has advanced or experienced a setback since the Paris Accord was signed over two years ago. At the global level, there is no doubt that public awareness has increased, and scientific progress in the realm of clean energy and emissions control has been phenomenal. Price of solar panels, electric cars, and renewable energy has come down steadily. However, at the same time, the pace of economic growth and demand for energy is again drawing on low-cost sources including coal-powered power plants. Urgewald, a German non-profit association, estimates that currently there are 1,600 coal plants planned or under construction in 62 countries which would increase the capacity of coal-powered plants by 43 percent, and make it harder to meet the goals set in the Paris Accord to keep global temperatures from rising below 2 degrees Centigrade.
While global awareness of the perils of climate change is high and environmental activism is growing in every nook and corner, these two forces of dynamism have hit the hard wall of reality, represented by renewed global economic uptick. I call this the tug of war between activism vs reality. GDP growth during 2018–20 is predicted to be robust, and increased energy demands will be met mainly by non-renewable energy sources, including coal, gas, and oil. United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) released its Emissions Gap, 2017 report in November and it shows a "disparity between the world's stated ambitions on climate and the actions it is currently taking." In a similar vein, Fatih Birol, Executive Director of International Energy Agency, asserts, "The era of fossil fuels is far from being over, even if the Paris pledges are fully implemented," Today, he said, the share of fossil fuels in the global energy mix is about 81 percent; if Paris goals are met, the share will drop only to 74 percent by 2040.
The bodies entrusted with the implementation of the Paris Accord, particularly the Conference of the Parties (COP) met twice since the Paris summit. The first, COP22 met in Marrakech, Morocco in November 2016 and COP23 Fiji, so named because Fiji was at the presidency, was held in Bonn, Germany in November 2017. COP24 is expected to meet in December 2018 in Katowice, Poland. The group is entrusted with formulating the rules and principles of implementation of the Paris Accord, known as the Rulebook, and finalising the format of "Talanoa dialogue", a Fijian name for the collective "stocktake" or progress report due in 2018. Even at COP23 it was clear that with US participation in doubt, future negotiations on some sticking points, particularly "loss and damage" and financing, will probably drag on beyond 2018. On the positive side, China, the world's largest consumer of energy, is likely to step into a more activist role, filling in the vacuum created by the US departure.
China's role while crucial is not fully transparent, and is compounded by its mixed record on the ground. Its energy demand is increasing in double digits, and while it is looking for carbon-free energy sources and electric vehicles, Chinese companies are building coal plants everywhere. "Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal." According to Bloomberg, China's coal-fired generation capacity may increase by as much as 19 percent over the next five years. "While the country has cancelled some coal-fired capacity due to lack of demand growth, China still plans to increase its coal-fired power plants to almost 1,100 gigawatts, which is three times the coal-fired capacity of the US".
The challenges for the coming years are tremendous, but not insurmountable. Countries must remain committed to the principle of Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to reduce carbon emissions. Some environmental groups have also suggested that OECD countries, i.e. large, developed countries that have created the current problem,need to keep their side of the bargain, even if the developing countries are falling behind. "Global energy consumption, expected to increase by 48 percent in the next 20 years, needs a major realignment, with current high consumers cutting back to allow the developing countries to catch up. A substantial reduction in growth of electricity demand is a precondition for the share of renewables to increase."
Various studies indicated that coal powered power plants need to be phased-out in OECD and EU by 2030 and by 2050 for developing countries. It is doubtful if this will happen since US is cutting back on its commitment and the Clean Power plan of the Obama era is dead. However, individual states must take action to help with plant shutdowns or phase-out, by providing the right incentives to the utilities and facilitating retraining of workers affected by closures of coal-fired plants. While some renewables are competitive with fossil fuels, others are not. Onshore wind and solar photovoltaic are comparable but offshore wind farms and solar thermal energy, are not. Solar and wind energy still have some technical issues that have slowed down adoption, and these are intermittency and the resulting high cost of integration into the power grid. Finally, a word of caution from Proessor Earl Ritchie of University of Houston. He wrote, "Most scenarios with high percentages of renewables rely on substantial reduction in growth of electricity demand. It's questionable how realistic this is, particularly if strong growth in electric automobiles is anticipated."
Dr Abdullah Shibli is an economist, and Senior Research Fellow at International Sustainable Development Institute (ISDI), a think-tank based in Boston, USA.