Charting the climate straight and narrow
Authors: None The Lancet Planetary Health
Journal: The Lancet Planetary Health (2021)

“From today, [there should be] no investment in new fossil fuel supply projects”. This may be a common sentiment voiced in the Lancet Planetary Health and other outlets concerned with a healthy liveable future. Surprisingly though, this is a direct quote from a recent special report produced by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in which they map out a comprehensive scenario for energy development to 2050 that is intended to meets the 1·5°C limit on global heating enshrined in the Paris Agreement. This wording, which sends a strikingly clear message about the need to stop investing in new fossil fuel extraction projects and comes close to aligning with the slogan “keep it in the ground”, is a clear departure from earlier work by the IEA which had been used by fossil fuel companies to justify continued coal, oil, and gas expansion. The IEA has a neutral sounding name, but it came into being in response to the oil crisis of the early 1970s with a goal of ensuring oil supply. This history, together with ongoing financial links to the oil industry, are thought to explain the agencies past reticence to embrace renewable energy and acknowledge the rapid reductions in fossil fuel energy required to keep within relatively safe climate limits. For that reason, many see this latest report—released ahead of the Glasgow Climate Summit in November (COP26)—as a watershed moment which makes new coal, oil, and gas investments increasingly hard to justify and existing climate plans of the major fossil fuel companies increasingly untenable. As the IEA executive director Dr Fatih Birol notes “The number of countries that have pledged to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century or soon after continues to grow, but so do global greenhouse gas emissions. This gap between rhetoric and action needs to close”. Importantly, Birol has also signalled that the net-zero roadmap will guide future work at the IEA and feature in their flagship World Energy Outlook annual reports. To produce their net zero by 2050 scenario, the IEA integrated models which simulate the global energy system, energy technology, air pollution, and climate change and land use. Economic modelling was also used to captures aspects of investment, spending, and GDP in the scenario. The IEA scenario represents one (rather than ‘the’) path to net zero and seeks to provide clarity on what delivering on ambitions to reach net-zero by 2050 might mean in practice. A more detailed yet digestible breakdown of the report is provided by Carbon Brief. In addition to an immediate stop on new fossil fuel investments, the scenario provides more than 400 milestones to indicate how this transformation could happen in practice, including net-zero electricity by 2040, millions of new jobs, universal energy access by 2030, and millions of premature deaths avoided due to reduced air pollution, as well as a boost to global GDP compared with a business as usual scenario. What's more, all of this is based on existing technologies, though Birol acknowledges not all are fully developed. Of course, the new scenarios are not without controversy with the degree of reliance on nuclear energy, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage among the more disputed aspects. Nevertheless, publication of the IEA scenario feels like an important shift in the baseline assumptions about what is now a justifiable energy investment. As if to confirm the feeling that something important has changed, three of the world's biggest oil and gas companies Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron have just been compelled in the courts and through shareholder voting to significantly cut emissions. In the case of Shell, a Dutch court found that they are required to reduce their total emissions, including those from operation and the use of the products it sells by 45% of 2019 levels by 2030. The legal case was brought by Dutch climate activists. Shell will appeal, but it is hard not to see this as a historic ruling. Meanwhile 61% of Chevron investors backed a proposal calling on the company to substantially reduce its emissions by reducing sales of fossil fuels, and activist shareholders secured the election of two climate-focused shareholders to the board of ExxonMobil. The clear message to everyone working for a green, healthy, and liveable future: keep going, momentum is building.