Using green fuels, adopting new and efficient methods to capture carbon and storing it, global governments achieving their targets of cutting emissions of Green House Gases [GHG], conserving the environment and afforestation could help mitigate climate change goals, according to a new report.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] released this month its Sixth Assessment Report [AR6] on Mitigation of Climate Change written by its Working Group III.
The report updates global assessment of climate change mitigation progress and pledges and examines sources of emissions. The report explains progress in emission cuts and mitigation efforts. It assesses impact of governments climate pledges linked to long-term emissions goals.
Eighty-three authors from 38 countries contributed to the report. Ten authors from India, six each from the US, Germany and the Netherlands and five from the UK contributed to the report. Most countries had single contributing author while some had two or three. They assessed literature written by experts from five subjects. The authors culled data from scientific, technological, environmental, economic and social aspects of mitigation of climate change to write the AR6.
Overall, the report exudes optimism on mitigation of climate change over the next decade. The authors credit this to public and private interventions and several governments’ policy decisions to adopt green energy by phasing out coal-fired power plants and increasing reliance on natural gas.
The report sounds a red alert on the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 Celsius above mid-17th century level that had seen a spike because of industrial revolution, mainly in Europe.
Prospects of governments controlling or keeping global warming to 1.5C above the level of the era before the industrial revolution are bleak, infer the report’s technical data. Public and private entities in energy business and conservation of the environment remain far behind switching technologies to low carbon emissions.
Pessimists says temperatures increasing by 1.5C are unavoidable. They base their doomsday prophecy on data which are not encouraging. Global net anthropogenic greenhouse gases continued to rise during the period 2010–2019. They were higher than any previous decade, but the rate of growth between 2010 and 2019 was lower than that between 2000 and 2009 the report says. Carbon dioxide emissions too continue to increase since the start of industrial revolution.
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel and industry contributed 64 per cent to GHGs in 2019, compared to 59pc in 1990. Emissions from human activity on land and forestry increased 11pc, Methane [18pc], NOx [4pc] and fluorinated gases [2pc], says the working group report.
The International Energy Agency [IEA] last month said, “Increased use of coal was the main cause driving up global energy-related CO2 emissions by over 2 billion tonnes, their largest ever annual rise.
“Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose by 6 per cent in 2021 to 36.3 billion tonnes, their highest ever level, as the world economy rebounded strongly from the Covid-19 crisis and relied heavily on coal to power that growth. The increase in global CO2 emissions of over two billion tonnes was the largest in history, more than offsetting the previous year’s pandemic-induced decline,” the IEA says.
Innovation, breakthrough technology and enough funding could still salvage climate change mitigation efforts.
[Sudeep Sonawane, an India-based journalist, has worked in five countries in the Middle East and Asia. Email: [[email protected]]
