Ending fossil fuel use with great urgency is IPCC’s core message

In the face of an appalling war in Ukraine, an energy crisis imposing immense hardship and food shortages likely to soon hit the poorest in many parts of the world, the instinctive reaction might be to park international efforts to address the climate crisis for a while.

The latest report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows the folly of that response. With the Earth already undergoing dangerous overheating, the international community has no option if it wants to avoid climate disaster but to end fossil fuel use in economies and throughout society – and do it with great urgency.

That uncompromising message is underpinned by a setting out of how it should be done. Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, to have a chance of limiting future warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Yet the world has the know-how to halve emissions this decade, the IPCC concludes. Critically, however, it has come to a pivotal moment. "It's now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees," says co-chair of the global assessment Prof Jim Skea. "Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible."

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Where does this latest UN report fit in?

Over a seven-year period, the world’s best climate scientists gather under the auspices of the IPCC to give their verdict on what the science is indicating in a world of rising emissions caused by CO2 and methane arising from human activities.

They are in the throes of the sixth global review. Monday's Working Group 3 (WG3) report is the third element in this process that will be finished later this year. The previous two parts have looked at the causes and impacts of climate change, but this one focuses on mitigation – or what we can do to stop it, with a big focus on solutions.

It was finalised in a tortuous two-week process where 195 governments including Ireland signed off on the key "summary for policy-makers" after line-by-line evaluation.

Can we just deal with the war in Ukraine first?

The world is in the throes of a climate emergency yet major economies are re-evaluating their reliance on fossil fuels in light of the Ukraine war, which has pushed already high energy prices to record levels.

The risk is the perception that war and energy costs are the more immediate issue, and will lead to increased reliance on expensive, polluting fossil fuels over coming decades.

If that happens, more emissions, higher temperatures and more extreme weather events are the inevitable consequence, while the world will have reduced capacity to respond to increasingly catastrophic impacts, pushing the planet to a point of no return.

There is much financial pain for consumers with every prospect of more in coming months, but scaling up renewables and energy efficiency measures could force adoption of a quicker timeline in weaning off oil and gas in the medium term, starting first by ending reliance on Russian fossil fuels.

Not only is wind and solar power much more environmentally acceptable, the IPCC highlights these energy sources are now a lot cheaper than fossil fuels – and without the uncertainties and price volatility that inevitably comes with big oil.

What are the main findings of the WG3 report?

The world can still hope to minimise the worst ravages of climate breakdown but only through a “now or never” response, with actions scaled up immediately, it says.

This will be difficult and requires concerted action by governments, businesses and individuals, though overall global GDP cost will be minimal over time. It confirms curbing fossil fuels rapidly is the quickest way to reducing emissions.

While it highlights notable progress in slowing the emissions growth rate from 2010-2019 and an increasing number of countries achieving sustained reductions, it concludes it is now “almost inevitable” that temperatures will rise above 1.5 degrees – the level above which many of the effects of climate breakdown will become irreversible.

The IPCC indicates it could be possible to bring them back down below the critical level by the end of this century. But this probably requires technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the ground. Climate activists insist this should not be a substitute for deep emissions cuts in coming years.

Are we about to rely on unproven ‘techno-fixes’?

This IPCC report suggests that to bring down the temperature before the end of the century will need natural and artificial means of removing carbon from the atmosphere. This means we will need to accelerate the development and deployment of CO2 removal, though we are not yet sure of its feasibility and have no idea of the likely financial costs of deployment at scale.

The bottom line is that all technological options for decarbonisation must be considered, such is the scale of the crisis.

Increasingly, experts and climate scientists believe carbon negativity – achieving “negative emissions” – is the only way forward, though the technology to do so is unproven as of yet and is likely to be expensive. “Safe levels” of CO2 (350 parts per million) were surpassed back in 1987, so it is critically urgent to actively clean up the atmosphere and undo damage done up to now.

Where does Ireland fit in within the global picture?

Needless to say Ireland is not among 18 countries cited for having cut their emissions in a sustained way over a decade. It has, however, committed to a 51 per cent reduction in its emissions by 2030, and to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

The Government’s decarbonisation targets are among the most ambitious of any country in the world – though overall emissions continue to rise due to a booming economy (up to recently), high car dependency and expansion in agriculture production of beef and dairy produce.

The targets are legally enshrined in the 2021 Climate Act, while emissions ceilings are about to be applied to all sectors of the economy from this year under the country’s first five-year carbon budget. It is a robust system designed to impose discipline on all carbon polluting activities.

Sky-rocketing energy prices, however, may prompt row-back on this and an easing off on carbon tax increases, making the decarbonisation challenge even more arduous. EPA data and other projections strongly indicate we will fail to flatten that rising emissions curve by 2025, thereby endangering the critical 2030 target. As a consequence we are set to fail to deliver on the IPCC call for “immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors”.