Climate Wire | The United Nations’ latest climate assessment has raised hopes for US energy policy, revealing that wealthy nations need to cut emissions far beyond even the most ambitious targets.
A report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has introduced a new deadline that the world must meet to avoid the most catastrophic climate impacts. We found that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require a 60% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 compared to 2019 levels (climate wireMarch 20).
This corresponds to a 67% reduction in emissions by 2035 from the 2005 baseline, the year the US uses as a benchmark. Even if the country met the Biden administration’s goal of reducing emissions by 50-52% by 2030, it would take him five years to achieve the 67% reduction.
Robbie Orvis, senior director of modeling and analytics at Energy Innovation, said:
One reason is what he called “capital turnover”. The Biden administration’s goals rely on enabling people and businesses to upgrade to more efficient, cleaner models when outdated equipment needs to be replaced. Inflation-control legislation provides incentives for these upgrades, whether for cars or coal-fired power plants, and upcoming regulations may also encourage the switch.
However, this gradual switch may not be fast enough for IPCC targets.
“To reach our goal of 60% below 2019 by 2035, we need to replace equipment before it reaches the end of its useful life,” said Orvis. “And it’s much harder from a policy standpoint and an economic standpoint.”
A report released last week by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which provides energy statistics to the government, suggested the U.S. may be behind its 2030 commitment to the Paris Agreement. And from 2030 onwards, easily achievable outcomes such as switching to electric vehicles and replacing gas heaters will leave more difficult sectors to decarbonise.
This is a challenge that global climate scientists say needs to be overcome to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Also on Monday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on rich countries to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by 2040. This puts him ten years ahead of the net-zero targets set by the United States and many other developed countries.
Scientists say the 1.5C temperature target relies on a net zero global temperature by 2050, but major developing countries, including China and India, have a few decades to go. It doesn’t promise to stop the emissions until after.
acceleration of change
It’s been almost two years since President Joe Biden pledged to the world that by 2030, the United States will reduce emissions by 50-52% compared to 2005 levels.
Since he made that pledge at the 2021 Earth Day Summit, Congress has passed major climate spending legislation and the EPA has begun tightening regulations to curb pollution from sectors like power, oil and gas.
But indicators continue to show the US is not yet on track to deliver on Biden’s 2030 promises.
Last week, the EIA released its Annual Energy Outlook for 2023. The outlook projects future energy trends and emissions through 2050 based on policies in place as of last November. This included an Inflation Reduction Act that included $369 billion in climate investments.
Still, the EIA projected that US energy-related carbon emissions would only decline by 25-38% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels.
This analysis excludes non-CO2 greenhouse gases and sinks and is limited to emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Nor does it take into account future regulations, state policies, or even specific inflation-cutting law programs.
Experts say EIA’s outlook is based on pessimistic assumptions. Especially with the speed at which Americans switch from gasoline-fueled vehicles to electric vehicles, in response to new incentives and targets from several key states. Analytical firms such as Energy Innovation estimate that the U.S. could achieve her 40% reduction in emissions by 2030, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act.
But the EIA report is a cautionary tale, targeting sectors whose emissions will determine the success or failure of the 2030 target. It also shows a gradual decline in emissions reductions from 2030 onwards. To meet IPCC recommendations for deep reductions by 2035 and 2040, the United States will need to make even more significant reductions.
Incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act will also begin to phase out in early 2030. This is the time when we need to realize some of the easiest, lowest-cost opportunities to green the U.S. economy.
Energy Innovation’s Orvis said: Electric vehicles, heat pumps, or other investments that promise to bend the emissions curve in other sectors are cost-effective, but people find it difficult and aggressive to replace equipment that still works. We need a policy.
“Your real constraints are time and how quickly you need to decarbonize,” he said.
EIA projections show that power sector emissions will decline by 15% from about 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to about 1.3 billion tonnes between 2022 and 2025. According to the EIA, by 2030 such emissions could fall by 63% compared to 2022 to 782 million tonnes.
But after 2030, these reductions will slow down. Electricity sector emissions will decrease by 8% between 2030 and 2035 to 723 million tons, and by 2040 by 10% to 707 million tons.
The power sector is a bright spot in the EIA analysis. In this outlook, industrial emissions are projected to decline over the decade, but recover in 2031 and trend upward for most of the 2030s and he 2040s. Industrial emissions in 2050 are only about 4% below 2022 levels.
The EIA Outlook does not attempt to predict what policies will be implemented in the future, which may continue to bend the curve.
“I think a promising question is whether Decade of Inflationary Law Incentives will accelerate the rate of change in the United States in a way that would enable such a science-based target.” RMI, cites targets in IPCC report .
The goal of reducing emissions by 67% by 2035 is “very aggressive,” but “things are starting to change faster than people thought,” he said.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environmental professionals.
