The world’s nations are planning to produce more than double the amount of coal, oil and gas consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, the UN said yesterday.
Ten days before a climate summit that is being billed as key to the viability of the 2015 Paris Agreement temperature goals, the UN Environment Programme said that government fossil-fuel production plans this decade “are dangerously out of sync” with the emissions cuts needed.
Emissions must go down nearly 50 percent by 2030 and to net-zero by the middle of the century to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the UN said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
However, its Production Gap report found that total fossil-fuel production would likely increase until at least 2040. Development plans would produce 110 percent more fossil fuels this decade than consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, and 45 percent more than for a world where temperatures increase 2°C.
“The research is clear: Global coal, oil and gas production must start declining immediately and steeply to be consistent with limiting long-term warming to 1.5°C,” said Ploy Achakulwisut, a lead report author from the Stockholm Environment Institute.
“However, governments continue to plan for and support levels of fossil-fuel production that are vastly in excess of what we can safely burn,” Achakulwisut said.
With 1.1°C of warming so far, Earth is being increasingly pummeled by droughts, floods and storms supercharged by rising sea levels.
The Paris deal saw countries commit to limiting warming to between 1.5°C and 2°C through sweeping emissions cuts. Under the deal, every signatory must submit renewed emissions cutting plans — known as National Determined Contributions, or NDCs — every five years.
In an assessment last month, the UN said that, taken together, countries’ latest NDCs — assuming that they are fulfilled — put Earth on course to reach a “catastrophic” 2.7°C of warming by 2100.
The organizers of COP26, which starts in Glasgow, Scotland, on Oct. 31, say that they want the summit to keep the 1.5°C temperature goal within reach.
Michael Lazarus, a coauthor of the report, said that the difference between countries’ NDCs and production plans “is the major mismatch” in climate diplomacy right now.
“Even in the face of inevitable decarbonization away from fossil fuels, some countries are speeding up their investments in activities to promote fossil-fuel production, vowing to remain the last ones standing,” he said.
Last week the International Energy Agency said that the use of coal — the most polluting fossil fuel — had increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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