After a great deal of negotiating, back in 2015 more than 200 countries signed up to targets that aim to restrict world warming to an average of 1.5°. Despite the decades between scientists positing that humans are warming the planet and this point, this is the easy part.
“Get the countries of the world to agree what is happening, and agree that we do not want to allow it to continue, so we had better do something about it”.
After this, we need the countries of the world to not only meet the targets that they set, but to exceed them and be willing to rachet up these targets until the reductions will be enough to keep warming to 1.5°.
Why 1.5°? Well the target was actually to keep warming under 2°C but preferably well below, and aiming for 1.5° (i.e. well below 2°C) is far safer. What is clear in the modelling is that for every fraction of a degree we can reduce warming, the impact on the planet reduces, meaning that the planet will remain a more and more safe place for humanity to live.
Furthermore, it is thought that many horrific climate change catastrophes will occur with warming above 1.5°C that we will avoid by keeping it below.
How is the UK doing? Well in our fifth carbon budget released in 2016, we set our aim to reduce carbon emissions by 57% by 2030.
So how is the UK doing? Unfortunately not well. It is true that we are slowing making progress, but unfortunately this is at about half the speed we need to in order to meet this goal. Over the last decade, coal use fell by 28%. Unfortunately, Oil and gas usage only fell by 1%.
It is thought that over the last decade, the gains were by improvements to carbon intensity – carbon emissions per point of GDP. The UK is currently emitting at the rate that we were last emitting in 1888, or about 134 years ago. Unfortunately, this is no where near the rate we need to hit net zero by 2050, let alone 2045.
Carbon capture is as yet still a largely unproven method. By 2050, every form of ground based transport needs to be electric (no emissions) or if we improve things greatly then perhaps some large transport might be able to use hydrogen to make its electricity (it takes far more energy to make hydrogen than to use it so this must be a last resort). All homes in the UK needs to have moved to either heat pumps, thermal solar, or something similar.
Given that this is just 28 years away at this point, how does it look?
- Just 2-3% of cars on the UK roads are currently electric or hybrid, so not great. More than half of 18-49 year olds in the UK say they want their next car to be electric, so it is entirely possible that this number will grow fast.
- The grid is greening fast ( there is no point in electrifying anything, if the electricity pollutes anyway). in 2021 renewables overtook fossil fuels for the first time with 35% of the power coming from fossil fuels, but 43% coming from green sources. The rest comes from nuclear, which is also carbon neutral.
- There is an increasing move towards electric heating, through direct boilers (expensive) heat pumps (expensive to install) and thermal solar- unfortunately currently this is both expensive and time consuming, at least in the UK. Hopefully this will change soon.
One in a thousand chance of hitting a target largely essential is quite sad, but still it is possible. Thankfully now the USA is back working with the world, there is still hope, but we need to advance faster.
WE ARE NOT OUT OF THE WOODS YET, EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE PULLING IN THE SAME DIRECTION.
