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Climate Pledges Loopholes
By Dale C. S. Destin – Published 19 January 2024 | Introduction As the world grapples with the urgency of climate action, the recent U.N. climate conference in Dubai set ambitious goals to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. However, concerns are rising among scientists who argue that these pledges lack concrete definitions and are riddled with…
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The theme for Earth Day 2023 is “Invest in Our Planet.” Here’s why we should do that—and how.
Excerpt from this story from Bloomberg:
The global economy won’t reach net-zero carbon emissions without putting an end to deforestation.
That’s the conclusion of the United Nations-backed Race to Zero campaign, which pushes companies and investors to reduce emissions. The report, which was published Wednesday in partnership with nonprofit Global Canopy, Science Based Targets initiative and the Accountability Framework Initiative, said companies committing to eliminate emissions by 2050 must act with urgency to stamp out tropical deforestation in their supply chains.
Cutting down trees to clear land for cattle or to sell timber is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and banks and fund managers add to the problem by providing the financing needed to enable deforestation. Protecting and restoring forests would likely result in 18% of the cuts needed by 2030 to keep the world on track to avert catastrophic climate change, the report said.
Central to tackling forest clearance is going after companies in the timber, land and agriculture industries. Together, these businesses contribute 22% to global emissions, half of which comes from deforestation for food, fiber, feed and fuel, according to Topping.
The good news is a growing number of these companies have pledged to reach net zero by 2050 or sooner, including more than 40% of the companies that Global Canopy considers to be critical for tackling tropical deforestation. That’s a near five-fold increase from just two years ago.
A “Net Zero” carbon emissions approach, the keystone of many government and corporate strategies on climate change, is a pollute now, pay later strategy, a new report argues.
Excerpt from this story from Nation of Change:
“Net-zero is this phrase that we all hear so much about and that also underpins many of the key initiatives and agendas at COP26,” said Scott Tully, a member of Glasgow Calls Out Polluters (GCOP), a grassroots group organizing for climate justice at COP26. “But net-zero, as this research reveals, leans heavily on speculative technologies and other undefined offsetting programs, amongst other mirages — all of this while big polluters keep on polluting.”
The problem with “net zero” strategies is that they too often allow rising emissions today while relying on an ability to draw greenhouse gases from the air later, campaigners say — raising grave questions about what happens if the tactics relied upon to draw down greenhouse gases don’t perform as expected.
“We all know, all of us, we have been part of researching and hard work that have gone into exposing the con called ‘net zero’ and other forms of false, false, false solutions which around here, we even prefer to call no solutions at all,” Aderonke Ige, associate director at Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa, said at a press conference accompanying the report. “As a matter of fact, these are death sentences for some other people in the world, especially people in the Global South, including Africans. This is a death sentence.”
This report highlights the net zero goals of a half-dozen major institutions: BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager; tech giant Microsoft; oil and gas giants BP and Shell; Drax, a bioenergy company that the report notes was recently revealed as “the UK’s biggest single source of CO2 emissions;” and the International Emissions Trading Association, a trade group that promotes carbon trading markets.
“We looked at oil and gas majors BP and Shell, who together have allocated more than $17 billion to oil and gas production this year alone and both are intending to spend tens of billions more in the years to come to ramp up gas production,” said Pascoe Sabido, researcher with Corporate Europe Observatory, and one of the report’s authors. “Yet somehow, that’s consistent with their net-zero plans, which I think says a lot about net-zero.”
“Their plans rely on expensive experimental technologies,” Sabido added, “like carbon capture and storage, voluntary carbon markets, and massive forestry offsetting.”
Excerpt from this story from Common Dreams/EcoWatch:
For the Biden Administration to meet its long-term target of net-zero emissions by 2050, the United States must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 60% below 2005 levels by 2030, according to a new report released Thursday.
In its analysis, Climate Action Tracker (CAT) found that in order for the U.S. to do its fair share to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C by the end of the century — the goal of the Paris agreement — the country must slash at least 57% to 63% of its emissions by the end of the decade and provide financial support to developing nations striving to transition away from climate-destroying fossil fuels.
Having officially rejoined the Paris agreement earlier this year, the Biden Administration is currently preparing to unveil a new domestic emissions reduction target, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). The U.S. is expected to announce its Paris agreement pledge for 2030 prior to a climate leaders' summit the White House is hosting on Earth Day, which falls on April 22.
According to the new report:
Biden's plan to decarbonize the U.S. power sector by 2035 — an objective he set in motion with an Executive Order requiring federal agencies to develop a procurement plan for carbon-free electricity — is consistent with a Paris agreement pathway.
Biden's proposal to gradually transition toward clean mobility, with a focus on the electrification of light-duty passenger vehicles (LDV), is insufficient. Although transportation is the largest source of emissions in the U.S., Biden has yet to set clear targets or timelines. CAT estimates that to comply with the Paris agreement, 95% to 100% of nationwide sales of LDV must be zero-emissions by 2030.
Biden's plan to cut the carbon footprint of the U.S. buildings sector in half by 2035 through retrofitting, appliance electrification, and on-site renewable energy generation is a step in the right direction. However, CAT estimates that to be consistent with the Paris agreement, emissions need to be about 60% lower in residential buildings and 70% lower in commercial buildings by 2030, compared with 2015 levels.
Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:
In the national debate over the role of natural gas power in the energy transition, some of the key players are digging in for a battle in Minnesota.
The state is the home of Xcel Energy, the first large U.S. utility to commit to reaching net-zero emissions, and now Minnesota regulators are considering a plan from Xcel that spells out some details of how it might get there.
A lot is riding on this case. Xcel, like utilities in other states, wants to continue using natural gas power plants as a way to maintain a reliable grid during the transition to cleaner power sources. Meanwhile, environmental groups last week issued alternative plans that say utilities can save money and cut emissions more quickly by investing more heavily in wind, solar and battery storage.
The participants in the case are also raising deeper, wonkier questions about the usefulness of the forecasts and models that companies use and the difficulty of making long-term plans. One of the big challenges is planning for the more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events, like the cold snap this week in Texas and some of the Midwest that led to rolling blackouts when power plants powered by natural gas, wind and other sources were not able to function.
Xcel has said that it needs the new natural gas plant, along with existing gas plants that will continue to operate, to guarantee that the grid remains reliable during the transition to net-zero emissions.
The gas industry and utility companies have spent years touting natural gas as a “bridge fuel.” Gas has lower emissions than coal, and gas-fired power plants can quickly ramp up and down, which means they are flexible working alongside resources like wind and solar.
But the “bridge fuel” message has run into the reality of a shifting market and rising urgency to address climate change. The costs of wind and solar power have fallen enough to compete with natural gas in much of the country. And researchers have put a spotlight on the public health and climate impacts of the entire process of producing and burning gas, undercutting the idea that gas is an environmentally friendly alternative to coal.
The building sector is the largest contributor of carbon emissions from human sources on the planet.
Construction industry's 37% represents the largest human contribution to global warming. Low-carbon materials and processes can change this.
UK Becomes First G7 Nation to End Coal Power
UK Becomes First G7 Nation to End Coal Power #carboncapture #cleanenergyjobs #EnergyUK #net-zeroemissions
