Within the next few decades, dozens of nations have committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions.
However, important specifics are missing from the strategies that are essential to stopping climate change. Specifically, how much more emissions must be removed from the atmosphere to reach the net-zero target?
According to a recent study, most nations have not estimated the amount of pollution they will need to offset to achieve net zero by 2050. The available estimates range from 5 to 52 percent of a country’s peak carbon emissions.
It is the most recent discovery in an expanding corpus of studies on nations that are hiding the challenges they face in their quest for net-zero emissions. Since large-scale carbon removal is still a ways ahead, many nations rely on unproven technology to offset a significant portion of their emissions and achieve climate goals.
Experts advise world leaders to make plans that take into account achieving net zero emissions with the fewest possible leftover emissions.
“You want to make sure you are investing in the right things if you’re planning for infrastructure that has a lifetime of decades,” stated Holly Buck, a University of Buffalo expert on climate policy. “So, if you want those residual emissions to be low in 2050, you don’t want to invest in, say, new fossil fuel infrastructure.”
However, the majority of countries worldwide still lack comprehensive long-term strategies.
Of the 195 nations that accepted the Paris Agreement, only 72 voluntarily submitted long-term strategies outlining their plans to transition to a low-carbon economy by 2050. Only 26 of those have an estimated amount of future residual emissions, according to a study that was just published in One Earth magazine this month.
Lead author Harry Smith, a PhD candidate at the University of East Anglia in England, stated, “We were surprised at how few countries report these emissions.”
The predictions made by those who do disclose residual emissions differ. Rich nations, which have traditionally produced the greatest amount of emissions that contribute to global warming, expect residuals in the 5 to 15 percent range in 2050, indicating that they want to decarbonize the majority of their economies.
However, Canada offers a variety of potential future states, such as residuals amounting to 17–44% of the nation’s peak emissions. The possibilities in Australia vary from 36 to 52 percent.
These more optimistic projections imply that some nations do not want to decarbonize to the greatest extent possible. Alternatively, they may decide to keep producing carbon in some industries, even ones that are easily decarbonized, and use carbon removal technology or purchase carbon offsets from other nations to make up for the pollution.
For example, Canada’s long-term policy makes it clear that “fossil fuel production and consumption could remain higher” in the event that large-scale carbon removal technologies prove to be practical.
It’s a significant risk. Although carbon removal is becoming more and more popular, it is still not occurring at the scale required to fulfill the climate targets set forth in Paris, and it is not certain how quickly the technology will improve in the ensuing decades.
The study also identifies further reasons to be concerned.
According to long-term strategies, agriculture is the main source of residual emissions. Reducing the amount of meat consumed is one method by which countries might reduce their agricultural emissions, but doing so is complex and politically challenging.
Smith noted that many governments consider these kinds of demand-side actions as “quite off the table”.
Additionally, the residual estimates of the long-term solutions typically do not include emissions from shipping and aircraft. However, experts generally agree that those sectors are among the hardest to decarbonize, which makes them clear sources of residual emissions in the future.
This suggests that the few countries that have produced residual emission estimates are likely still underestimating them.
vague assurances
Other studies have also raised these risks.
In a related research that was published in Nature last year, Beck discovered that while most long-term strategies do not address residual emissions, the ones that do often leave room for interpretation on the precise source of these emissions and how they can be offset by carbon removal.
The investigation’s main focus was on the long-term methods with the lowest estimated residual emissions. It revealed that countries projected their leftovers to amount to an average of 18 percent of their present emissions, even in those most aggressive and best-case scenarios.
Whether or not they have been explicitly outlined in a long-term strategy, other research groups are keeping tabs on the net-zero dates that nations all around the world have stated in recent years.
By 2050, a lot of them—including the United States—aspire to have a net-zero economy. That aligns with recommendations from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for how to achieve the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Yet, study teams have discovered that many of these deadlines are inadequate for long-term planning.
The Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific collaboration that tracks government actions to combat climate change, assesses countries’ net-zero targets. The investigation has discovered that the majority of net-zero programs lack specificity and adhere to non-scientists recommended best practices for long-term planning.
CAT’s rules require nations to publicly estimate the amount of carbon they will remove in the future. They also recommend counterbalancing residual emissions within a country’s borders, discouraging nations from using offsets acquired from elsewhere to offset their remaining emissions.
According to Sarah Heck, a climate policy analyst with the organization Climate Analytics and a team member of the Climate Action Tracker, “the more comprehensive and transparent a country is with its net zero targets, the better the CAT will evaluate the country’s target” via email.
Only a small number of net-zero strategies—including those from Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the United Kingdom, and the European Union—have received an “acceptable” rating from the organization thus far.
“PDFs contained within a folder”
Experts concur that nations should create comprehensive, long-term plans for reaching net zero emissions and that handling residual emissions is a crucial component of those plans. It’s still easier said than done, though.
There’s no sign that the Paris Agreement will make long-term plans required anytime soon. Making them mandatory could also put a strain on nations with little funding or political support for comprehensive policy planning and long-term economic modeling.
According to Buck, countries would need to commit more resources to their planning if they wanted to make long-term initiatives a higher priority under Paris.
“The story, in my opinion, is that we need to dedicate a lot more resources to planning and we’re not making a serious effort,” she remarked. “To make these real plans instead of PDFs that sit in a folder, stakeholder and public engagement and buy-in is just as important as technological modeling.”
According to Buck, in the interim, the international community may also provide more thorough, uniform guidelines for what constitutes appropriate long-term policies.
Numerous experts recommend that countries set distinct goals for cutting emissions and offset them with carbon reduction. It is suggested that the targets for reducing emissions should be set high and should aim to decarbonize all sectors excluding those that are difficult or impossible to reduce. Countries should then start removing carbon from the atmosphere.
The divided targets would deter nations from consuming fossil fuels indefinitely and from expecting that carbon reduction, with all of its unknowns, would eventually provide a solution.
According to Smith, nations should concentrate their innovation efforts on reducing residual emissions, working to create new laws and technology that would precisely cut these future leftovers.
Furthermore, according to Buck, nations shouldn’t only assume that some residuals will always exist. Since technology is constantly changing, industries that are currently challenging to decarbonize may become simpler to clean up in the future.
As technology advances, so do the expectations for residual emissions, according to her. It’s critical that we update these estimates and presumptions on a regular basis.