The International Energy Agency is relying on the deployment of large-scale negative emissions technology within the last area of the century to limit warming to at least one.5C, based on its latest major report.
The agency's World Energy Outlook (WEO) is undoubtedly a reference for governments, companies and investors on the state of the world's energy prospects and explores possible futures for global energy trends.
In the report, published on Wednesday, the IEA extended its Sustainable Development Scenario to offer the tougher Paris Agreement goal of 1.5C.
Under this, the IEA sets out what can need to happen for that world to limit global temperature rise to “well below 2C”: oil demand peaks over the following couple of years, universal energy access is achieved by 2030 and energy-related CO2 emissions fall 3.8% each year to less than 10 gigatonnes in 2050 to put the world on track to attain net zero emissions by 2070.
On this trajectory, the IEA found the world would have a 2 in three possibility of limiting global temperature rise to 1.8C without needing to remove CO2 in the air by producing bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (Beccs), for instance.
Under the same scenario, the IEA gives a 50% change of meeting the 1.5C goal by utilizing negative emissions technologies after 2070 to soak up around 300Gt of CO2 – making-up for overshooting the emissions limits that will keep temperatures below 1.5C.
The IEA acknowledged you will find “uncertainties” concerning the scale, impacts and costs of negative emissions, which require large amounts of land, potentially conflicting with food production. Nevertheless its scenario is only modelled to 2050 and doesn't assess whether the deployment of negative emissions at scale within the last part of the century is possible or sustainable.
Instead, the IEA argues its scenario would use less negative emissions than the average level of CO2 that needs to be taken off the environment in IPCC scenarios, that provide a 50% chance or more of limiting warming to at least one.5C.
For Joeri Rogelj, a scientist at Imperial College along with a lead author around the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 1.5C report, the comparison with IPCC scenarios is “a smoke screen” masking the IEA scenario's insufficient consistency with long-term sustainable development.
“The amount of CO2 removal needed after 2070 to satisfy 1.5C would go well past the sustainable limits the IPCC has identified,” he said, describing it as “really problematic”.
Instead, the scenario “ends in 2050 with a world warming beyond a level science considers compatible with sustainable development of poor and vulnerable populations,” he told CHN.
The WEO report does incorporate a short and undetailed pathway for the world to achieve the 1.5C goal without negative emissions. Under this pathway, civilized world achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 and developing countries by 2050 – a goal that isn't currently being considered by large emitters such as India and china.
Rogelj said the IEA's “hesitant” focus on the 1.5C goal was “a positive step” but also a “missed opportunity” to fully align the WEO with international ambition.
In June, CHN reported the IEA was exploring options to create a scenario aligned using the 1.5C goal after the agency received fire inside a letter from scientists, business leaders and campaigners for not taking into consideration the Paris Agreement's more ambitious target.
This opened a debate about the role of the IEA setting norms around global energy use. The agency's business as usual scenario, which charts a world on track to at least 2.7C of warming, continues to be WEO's central reference for investors, as opposed to a scenario aligned towards the Paris goals.
“It's simply not enough to understand more about 1.5C over a couple of paragraphs when the bulk of the analysis remains centered on this default pathway that will put us on the right track for a catastrophic road to warming,” said Kelly Trout, senior research analyst at Oil Change International.
“By continuing to fall short on ambition, the IEA normalises disastrous amounts of fossil fuel investment,” she added.
