Thread by @Davidxvx

This morning, I read a newsletter from an excellent #climate journalist who said the @IEA found last year that "we’d already discovered sufficient fossil fuels to get the world comfortably through to net-zero by 2050".

That's true. But it's not what the IEA said. Let me explain.

This is all about the difference between DISCOVERED and DEVELOPED reserves. That is shown in this classic @PriceofOil graphic. Oil & gas companies own much more in fossil fuel reserves than they have already developed.

It's not just that we've discovered enough fossil fuels.

It's that oil, gas, and coal companies have already DEVELOPED fields and mines to meet the fossil fuel demand in the IEA's 1.5ºC-aligned net zero by 2050 scenario.

Discovered reserves are much larger. Oil, gas, and coal companies own a lot of undeveloped fossil fuel reserves.

So, our understanding of the IEA's finding is that there's no room for new fossil fuel development or investment in new fields and new projects that had not already received a final investment decision before the end of 2021.

This difference matters.

It matters because we've known for a decade or more that oil, gas, and coal companies own a huge volume of fossil fuels that can never be burned. @CarbonBubble did a lot of pioneering work on this. See eg: economist.com/business/2013/…

Here's @billmckibben writing about this "brutal (then) new math" in 2021: rollingstone.com/politics/polit…

It's not just that they've discovered too much oil, gas, and coal. It's that they've developed too much oil, gas, and coal.

Because, in truth, the situation is probably even worse than the IEA found last year.

In 2016, @FuelOnTheFire led @PriceofOil's first 'The Sky's Limit' report, finding that burning just the fossils in developed, operating fields and mines then would blow past 1.5ºC or even 2ºC.

We have updated this analysis regularly since. This is the most recent graph, from our Big Oil Reality Check report from May 2022.

You can find the full report here: priceofoil.org/2022/05/24/big…

Earlier this year, @kellyatrout, @FuelOnTheFire and others published a version of this analysis in a peer reviewed journal article:

https://twitter.com/kellyatrout/status/1526912527279726593?s=20&t=DNRB5iaBWSSAYSiQKfgofA

So, why do we say that developed oil, gas, and coal reserves are too much for 1.5ºC or 2ºC, when the IEA says that they are just enough for 1.5ºC?

The big difference is that we exclude pre-2050 carbon capture & storage, whereas the IEA projects a 4000% growth in CCS this decade.

Is that exponential growth in CCS plausible? You tell me.

This graph, from our 'Zeroing In' briefing on the IEA's #WEO2021 shows the IEA's projected growth in CCS compared to the existing development pipeline.

Even the IEA has found it's not enough not just to stop new exploration (let alone stop only some exploration, as the New Zealand government has).

And, without exponential growth in CCS, it's not enough just to stop new oil, gas, and coal extraction. We need a managed decline.

That is, we need to close some oil, gas, and coal fields and mines early. That's hard. That means breaking free from carbon lock in. It could involve risks of ISDS litigation under free trade deals. It will require real, urgent just transition measures to support working people.

Oh, one correction: I accidentally wrote that Bill McKibben wrote about the "brutal new math" of the climate crisis in 2021. That was a typo; I flipped the last two digits. It was 2012.