Reducing emissions is also about optimizing the speed of change and the preservation of stability where possible. Climate change was already becoming more invasive, with its more intense heatwaves, storms, and floods. Now, the IEA warns, transforming the energy system must be front-of-mind for every region, nation, city, company, and household—a need as basic as protecting citizenry, paying employees, feeding kids—but also to swap out the energy system humming in the background.
Getting to this point, however, has not been easy. For years, environmental groups and climate activists have been demanding the IEA produce a full-scale pathway for getting to net zero by 2050. As an agency that only answers to ministers of rich countries, it’s had to wait until the majority of its members committed to that goal, with the U.S.—the IEA’s biggest funder—joining the list last month.
While there’s no dearth of energy models showing how the world reaches climate goals, few have the reach and influence that IEA’s models do. They shape decisions made by governments from New Delhi to Washington. They inform investors in London and Cape Town. The net-zero scenario is expected to be a part of all major reports IEA publishes in the future, which means we’ll continue to see the stunning gap between where the world is and where it needs to be.
Crucially, as Jones puts it, the IEA’s report isn’t just a “black-box modeling exercise” but one that comes with hundreds of milestones on the way to net zero: no coal power plants after 2021, no internal-combustion engine sales from 2035, no emissions from electricity before 2040 and so on.
The next step will see analysts translating the IEA’s global analysis into country-level and company-level goals. “How many of them are impossible? I’m not really sure,” said Jones. It’s clear, however, that “we’re massively off track, and we need some real injection of action.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.