The new IEA report on net-zero is a big step in the right direction, and its call to cease all new fossil fuel projects has grabbed headlines, which is welcome. But the report also has some serious problems that are worth discussing:
First, in order to maintain the assumption of economic growth-as-usual in rich countries, it relies on unprecedented rates of GDP/energy decoupling, to an extent that has been questioned repeatedly in the empirical literature.
Second, it achieves this decoupling in large part by relying on efficiency improvements, but the model does not take adequate account of rebound effects, which have been identified as a significant problem.
Third, it relies on a lot of BECCS and other carbon capture and storage approaches, which is a risky gamble and has several big downsides (in terms of land use, biodiversity loss, soil depletion, competition with food crops, energy and water use, etc.)
If we dial down our assumptions about decoupling, bioenergy and CCS to safer and more feasible rates, the net-zero pathway will require a bigger reduction of energy and resource use in rich countries. This needs to be part of our discussion.
For a review of evidence related to the three points above, and for a discussion of more technologically feasible approaches, this recent paper by @LorenzClimate and Manfred Lenzen is useful: nature.com/articles/s4146…
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