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Glen Peters Profile picture
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3 Feb, 5 tweets, 3 min read
Oslo had a goal to halve emissions in 4 years (to 2020), but emissions have only gone down 2.5% over that time.

Perhaps some things are out of Oslo's control, or, perhaps, reducing emissions is not so easy 🤔...

1/
nrk.no/norge/de-rodgr…
Oslo had a plan that was distributed across sectors. It is fair to argue that some things were out of their control (CCS at Klemetsrud), but not all things.

There was meant to be a 40% reduction in transport, for example, with many local measures.



2/
Here is how transport emissions were meant to go down. Perhaps Oslo did well on the collective transport, but how was progress across other transport sub-sectors?



/3
Here are the measures that were meant to meet the target. A lot of these seem to be in Oslo's control?

We need to see a comparison of progress on each of these items & evaluate why emissions didn't go down (or why the original estimates were high).



/4
Norway has been traditionally good at making ambitious climate pledges, but generally very bad at meeting them...

Now Oslo is in the same boat. I have no doubt Oslo tried, so what goes wrong? Sounds like a good research project...

cicero.oslo.no/no/posts/nyhet…

5/5

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More from @Peters_Glen

Glen Peters Profile picture
4 Feb
THREAD: Climate risks & scenarios
[based on a presentation]

Financial institutions are asked to assess climate risk “…, taking into consideration different climate-related scenarios, including a 2°C or lower scenario.”

So, which scenario(s) do they use?

1/ Image
2. It depends on the risk!

Easiest to frame around where we are heading (black line - approximate)

Climate risk: We have risk already, but we are concerned about it getting worse

Transition risk: We are mitigating, but policy, technology, society might make that happen faster Image
3. There is likely a drop in emissions from COVID of ~7%, but the IEA (& others) expect a rebound. Most analysts think emissions will be flat(ish) in the next decade.

The goal is to get to net-zero CO₂ emissions. When? Short answer: the earlier the better... Image
Read 10 tweets
Glen Peters Profile picture
1 Feb
We can calculate the historical contributions to current warming, but how does this change in the future as we follow different levels of mitigation? This needs scenarios...

A short thread our new paper...

1/
link.springer.com/article/10.100…
2. We use the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs).

There are 5 SSPs, 6 forcing levels, & 6 IAMs. This is up to 180 realizations of future historical contributions, but their are 127 in practice as not all combinations were implemented or solvable.
3. A challenge with historical contributions is to pick the start & end year.

Here is a start year of 1850 (CO₂ left, GHG right), with end-year:
* 1992, 2015: OECD high shares
...
* 2100: OECD share declines, more so in baselines (right bars) due to rise of Asia (yellow)
Read 10 tweets
Glen Peters Profile picture
25 Jan
Yes, if you burn a lump of biomass & a lump of coal, the biomass emits more CO₂ (per kg).

That does not mean biomass is worse for climate (unless you are in with the coal lobby).

Coal takes millions of years to replace, biomass from years to centuries.

cicero.oslo.no/no/posts/klima…
When you grow a carrot, & eat it & respire CO₂, you don't march the streets complaining it is destroying the climate. The carrot grows back (& may even degrade the land), but it is essentially a closed cycle (otherwise the planet would have imploded millions of years ago).
If you grow an energy crop, with a rotation of 1 year, it is like growing a carrot. There may be losses in the life cycle emissions, as there is when harvesting & transporting a carrot. Likewise, the land may get degraded. Food production impacts the environment, also bioenergy!
Read 7 tweets
Glen Peters Profile picture
19 Jan
To say "the remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C is 440 GtCO₂" [add favorite number] is highly misleading

Taking a narrow 67–33% range, the value is 230–670 GtCO₂, but full range (left) could be −1000 - 2000 GtCO₂... (yes, could be negative or huge)

1/
nature.com/articles/s4324…
When I wrote "studies ranging from −100 to about 800 GtCO₂" back in 2018 I was being very conservative (there were no full uncertainty analyses then) rdcu.be/bHT2C

Good to see papers (now) being much more explicit about the uncertainty & range...

2/
I have problems with the remaining carbon budgets presented as a single number, instead of a range. Is there any other climate variable presented as a one-sided probability? The ECS, eg, is presented as a range.
rdcu.be/bHT2C

Good to see the authors use ranges!

3/
Read 6 tweets
Glen Peters Profile picture
18 Jan
THREAD: Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs)

Global car sales shrank by ~14% in 2020
* Sales of electric cars grew ~50% (from a very low level)
* Sales of SUVs declined ~10%, but share of sales went from 39% to 42%

→ What about emissions from SUVs?

1/
iea.org/commentaries/c…
Emissions from SUVs are estimated to have seen a slight increase of 0.5% in 2020, despite global emissions down ~7%.

"Despite the effects of the pandemic on overall car use, SUVs consumed more oil last year than they did in 2019"

2/
"Oil consumption from SUVs reached 5.5 million barrels per day in 2020"

"Remarkably, we estimate that the increase in the overall SUV fleet in 2020 cancelled out the declines in oil consumption by SUVs that resulted from Covid-related lockdown measures"

3/
Read 9 tweets
Glen Peters Profile picture
23 Dec 20
1. Oil & gas companies still expect the world to consume large quantities of oil & gas in 2050. That view would seem to put the oil giants in conflict with the IPCC.

𝐈𝐧 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞...

@bstorrow eenews.net/climatewire/st…
2. [O]il companies & the IPCC alike rely on a contentious strategy known as negative emissions — the practice of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. In theory, NETs would buy the world a little more time to phase out the use of fossil fuels ...
3. "[N]one of these models are forecast machines" @DetlefvanVuuren

"It's just an element, a tool to explore different trajectories on the basis of the knowledge we have today & to see what ... might encounter."

Both critics & modelers agree such nuance is often lost
Read 20 tweets

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