The next five years will be decisive for the climate

It’s five minutes to midnight. Or rather, there are just five years left to hope to stabilize the climate and respect, within a few tenths, the objectives of the Paris Agreement. In updating its forecasts, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF)one of the most reputable news agencies, maintains that there is hope, provided that greenhouse gas emissions are capped now.

Technically, the effort required is entirely achievable and above all, economically, the bill is bearable. The costs of achieving this are only 19% higher than a scenario guided by economic rationality alone (a laissez-faire scenario) but which would generate warming of +2.6°C, a rise in temperatures which would cause considerable damage. and would make life impossible in many places on the planet.

The new study carried out by BNEF experts contradicts alarmist and defeatist discourse. Considerable progress has been made over the last decade, with the spectacular development of renewable energies, particularly solar and wind. Even without additional effort, their contribution will make it possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2050. This is obviously insufficient to achieve the Paris objectives but it is an encouraging first step.

Priority to electricity production

According to BNEF experts, even if no additional measures are taken, renewable energies will reach 50% of electricity production at the end of this decade, 70% by 2050. By accelerating the effort in this only area, we would have more time to decarbonize aviation, steel or agriculture, sectors where competitive low-carbon solutions do not yet exist on an industrial scale.

The decarbonization of electricity production must therefore be a priority, in particular with the adoption of electric cars which will produce a very significant reduction in oil consumption. For BNEF experts, the slowdown in sales of electric vehicles would only be temporary.

In responses to questions asked by the public, experts emphasize the need to deploy CO capture and sequestration technologies on a large scale₂, and energy storage. Agnostic in terms of technological choices, they predict a decline in the share of nuclear power in the laissez-faire scenario and a slight increase in the event of an accelerated transition.

But their message is summarized as follows: we must abandon fossil fuels in energy production without delay. And in one sentence: “For every dollar spent on fossil fuels, an average of three dollars will need to be invested in low-carbon energy over the rest of the decade while we are currently at parity.”

Helping less developed countries

This study agrees with the conclusions of the Bruegel Institute, a laboratory of ideas based in Brussels. This think tank judges that the objectives of the Paris Agreement are still achievable provided that industrialized countries significantly increase their contributions to help developing or emerging countries exit coal consumption as soon as possible. Because if these countries do not receive aid, all the efforts made by industrialized countries will be annihilated.

Taking a carbon tax of $80 as a cost basis, the Bruegel Institute comes to the conclusion that the benefits of investments to quickly exit coal are far greater than the costs of inaction. So why doesn’t the common economic benefit of rich and developing countries trigger a virtuous cycle of cooperation? Bruegel’s experts put forward the hypothesis that “the most advanced countries are reluctant to lend if they do not have control over how this money is spent. For their part, developing countries are reluctant to phase out coal without the assurance of significant financial support for investments in renewable energy that are compatible with their development objectives.

For experts, this mutual distrust between lenders and debtors can be resolved by strengthening multilateral mechanisms. It’s urgent, the clock is ticking. Without decisive progress on this diplomatic front, it will be too late to hope to respect the Paris Agreement. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has just confirmed the concerns of Bruegel’s experts. In his latest study, it indicates that oil consumption will decrease in advanced countries but increase in emerging countries by 2030, before declining in the coming decades. If this scenario is confirmed within five years, the fight against global warming will be “in definitive failure” to use the formula of the exams.

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