Blowing the budget
Greetings
Price Waterhouse (PwC ) has issued a report following up on the IPCC adoption of the carbon budgetting approach
Although world leaders don't seem ready to start negotiating an agreement allocating the budget. PwC points out that this is the only feasible next step:
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“The IPCC has included it as quite a central part of its report this year, and that is why we focused on it,” Jonathan Grant, director of PwC sustainability and climate change told RTCC.He adds that it could play an important part in the UN talks on climate change between now and 2015, when governments will try to achieve a legally binding deal on emissions reductions.“I think in theory we should move towards negotiations about which country gets which share of the carbon budget.“I think the only way to say whether or not we’re on track for two degrees is if we convert these pledges into actual carbon budget numbers, but there are huge political challenges to trying to carve up the carbon budget in that way.”
Their approach is to "de carbonizing" the economy - i./e continue with economic growth, but by getting more "bang" for each ton of CO2.
On a side note -Here's how PwC deals with the shale gas "revolution" Holy Jevons Paradox, Batman!PwC used carbon figures outlined in a report in September by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Under a scenario outlined there that would keep temperature gains below 2 degrees, countries can emit about 270 billion tons of carbon through 2100.To achieve that, they would need to decarbonize at 6 percent a year, PwC said. Even doubling the current rate to 1.4 percent a year would lead to warming of more than 4 degrees.
----"The report points to the fact that, although the shale gas revolution in the US has significantly reduced the country’s emissions, the consequent reduction in coal price has simply increased emissions elsewhere. The percentage of the UK energy mix derived from coal increased from 30% in 2001 to 39% by 2012, while China has tripled its coal consumption since 2000."
World’s carbon budget could be blown by 2034 – PwC
Last updated on 2 November 2013, 11:37 am
PwC report warns that current rate of decarbonisation leaves world is on track to exceed “carbon budget” by 2034
Source: Flickr/Randy Connolly
By Sophie Yeo
The planet could face irreversible and potentially catastrophic levels of global warming in just over 20 years unless the world commits to a much higher rate of decarbonisation.
A new report from leading consultancy PwC says that the amount of greenhouse gas emissions countries can release is likely to be blown by 2034.
This bank of carbon – around 270GtC even according to conservative estimates – will have been emptied if the global economy continues at its current decarbonisation rate of just 0.7% per year.
PwC have calculated that even doubling the current rate of decarbonisation to 1.4% per year will set the world on course to hit a 4C increase in global temperatures by 2100.
A World Bank report released in June described the extreme heat waves, sea level rise and severe droughts and floods that will hit the poorest and most vulnerable nations in a 4C world. It noted that some of the worst consequences could be avoided if temperatures were limited to under 2C.
Carbon budget
The UN-backed IPCC report, which brings together the most recent findings of climate science, found that in total the world can emit a total of 800GtC if there is to be even a 66% chance of remaining below the 2C mark. By 2011, 531GtC of this had already been emitted.
“The IPCC has included it as quite a central part of its report this year, and that is why we focused on it,” Jonathan Grant, director of PwC sustainability and climate change told RTCC.
He adds that it could play an important part in the UN talks on climate change between now and 2015, when governments will try to achieve a legally binding deal on emissions reductions.
“I think in theory we should move towards negotiations about which country gets which share of the carbon budget.
“I think the only way to say whether or not we’re on track for two degrees is if we convert these pledges into actual carbon budget numbers, but there are huge political challenges to trying to carve up the carbon budget in that way.”
Decarbonisation
The deadline of 2034 as the year at which the world could exceed its carbon budget means that businesses will have to factor it into any decisions on major infrastructure and capital investments. “Climate risks are now business risks,” the report warns.
Grant says: “The results raise real questions about the viability of our vast fossil fuel reserves, and the way we power our economy. The 2 degrees carbon budget is simply not big enough to cope with the unmitigated exploitation of these reserves.”
If the planet is not going to blow its carbon bank, the carbon intensity – the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of GDP produced – will have to reduce by 6% every year up to 2100, the report finds.
This will not be an easy task, considering that no country has so far managed to sustain any high level of reductions, despite a similar alert from PwC in 2008 that the G20 needed to increase its decarbonisation rate by 3.5% per year to avoid dangerous warming. Currently, the rate stands at just 0.7%. The 6% figure now given attempts to compensate for this shortfall.
The report points to the fact that, although the shale gas revolution in the US has significantly reduced the country’s emissions, the consequent reduction in coal price has simply increased emissions elsewhere. The percentage of the UK energy mix derived from coal increased from 30% in 2001 to 39% by 2012, while China has tripled its coal consumption since 2000.
Economic growth
The 6% figure for the rate of necessary decarbonisation based upon the projected growth of the global economy, which is forecast to triple in size between now and 2050 – although some economists have questioned whether such predictions can be counted on, should climate change continue unfettered.
“Our analysis assumes long term moderate economic growth in emerging economies, and slow steady growth in developed economies.
“But, failing to tackle climate change is unlikely to result in such a benign scenario of steady growth,” said Grant.
This means decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions. Both developed and developing countries will have to challenge the notion, entrenched since the industrial revolution, that a nation’s wealth depends on the amount of fossil fuels it can burn.
The report says: “Unless economic growth is decoupled from carbon emissions we would face significant global warming which will have serious and far reaching implications.”
----
The world risks blowing through its carbon budget in 21 years, threatening to cause global warming of more than double the threshold deemed safe by the United Nations, the global accounting firm PwC said today in a study.
The budget is the amount of greenhouse gases the world can emit by 2100 to cap the temperature rise at 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). CO2 emitted per unit of economic output fell at 0.7 percent per year from 2007 through 2012, less than an eighth of the required rate now needed, PwC said.
“G20 countries are still consuming fossil fuels like there’s no tomorrow,” PwC Sustainability & Climate Change Director Jonathan Grant said in an e-mailed statement. “The results raise real questions about the viability of our vast fossil fuel reserves, and the way we power our economy. The 2-degrees carbon budget is simply not big enough to cope with the unmitigated exploitation of these reserves.”
World leaders endorsed the 2-degree target as the scale of temperature increase from the start of the industrial era that’s acceptable before more dangerous impacts occur. Those include rising seas, more intense storms and shifting rainfall patterns.
Envoys from 190 nations are aiming to craft a treaty by 2015 that will put the planet on a path to limit warming to 2 degrees. The pact would replace the Kyoto Protocol, which was negotiated in 1997 and regulates the greenhouse gases in a group of industrial nations that now are responsible for less than 15 percent of global emissions.
A number of “silver bullets” identified for large-scale decarbonization, including nuclear power and carbon capture and storage, appear to be failing, PwC said. Cheap shale gas, which has helped lower U.S. emissions by replacing coal, displaced dirtier coal to other markets, including Europe, according to the consultant.
Among G20 nations, Argentina, the U.S. and Australia achieved the biggest average annual reductions in the carbon intensity over the 5 years through 2012, PwC found. Intensity rose in Saudi Arabia, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico and Japan.
PwC used carbon figures outlined in a report in September by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Under a scenario outlined there that would keep temperature gains below 2 degrees, countries can emit about 270 billion tons of carbon through 2100.
To achieve that, they would need to decarbonize at 6 percent a year, PwC said. Even doubling the current rate to 1.4 percent a year would lead to warming of more than 4 degrees.
“On current trends we will use up this century’s carbon budget by 2034 -- sixty six years early,” Leo Johnson, a partner at PwC, said in the report’s foreword. “Put simply, we are busting the carbon budget.”
Labels: carbon budget, climate, CO2, de carbonize, ICC
posted by Walter @ 5:02 PM
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