Greg Muttitt Profile picture
Feb 6 15 tweets 5 min read
Our new paper in @NatureClimate finds 1.5C pathways underestimate how much Global North must cut CO2 emissions and how fast oil & gas must be phased out globally
This is because pathways rely too much on phasing out coal, with less emphasis on oil & gas.
nature.com/articles/s4155…
Ending coal use is urgent, for both climate & health

But it takes time to enable a just transition in countries that are highly coal-dependent: e.g coal provides 73% of power in India + 89% in South Africa. These can’t be switched off overnight without severe social costs.
The median 1.5°C pathway from @ipcc_ch #AR6 sees global coal power down 87% by 2030, and 96% by 2035.

Highly coal-dependent developing countries would have to replace almost their whole power fleet within a decade.
In comparison, global gas power falls just 14% by 2030 , and global overall oil use just 10% in the median pathway.

Is this the right balance?

What would a realistic phase out of coal look like in the South + what are the implications for the energy transition?
We compared with the last 50 years' fastest power transitions, in all countries. This includes major policy efforts (Japan post-Fukushima, responses to 1970s oil price) and external events (collapse of USSR, wars, sanctions), so gives an indicator of “achievable at a stretch”
Here are all countries' fastest transitions:
Current 1.5°C pathways would require 🇨🇳, 🇮🇳, & 🇿🇦 to phase out coal 2x faster than the fastest power sector transition of the last 50 yrs, by any country, relative to system size.
The original @PastCoal phaseout timelines of 2030 for North & 2050 for South, with linear decrease, would see some of largest coal consumers at the "world record" pace of power transitions but not beyond it. Southern countries would still have to reduce coal power by 1/3 by 2030
Some countries - e.g. 🇮🇩,🇷🇺 - would be must slower than historical records, so could potentially move faster than @pastcoal timeline, with provision of climate finance for Southern countries
We then modelled a 1.5C pathway with coal phaseout no faster than 2030/50 North/South timeline.

We found Global North must reduce CO2 emissions 50% faster than if these speed limits are ignored
More emissions from coal means less room for oil and gas, which both decline faster.

e.g. US cumulative oil production to 2050 is 20% lower than 1.5C pathways without speed limits
The key lessons are:
1) Limiting warming to 1.5C requires cuts in all 3 fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas
2) 1.5C pathways are underestimating the needed cuts in oil & gas by proposing unrealistically rapid coal phaseout in coal-dependent Southern countries
3) Integrated assessment models are not good at representing socio-political realism: this area needs more development
Here's our paper again: nature.com/articles/s4155…

If you don't have access, you can see our unpaywalled, submitted version here: researchsquare.com/article/rs-141…
It was a pleasure to work on this research with @JamesJEPrice, @st_pye and Dan Welsby of @UCL_Energy

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More from @FuelOnTheFire

Oct 4, 2020
This is an important and thought-provoking new paper by @st_pye et al on the limitations of current energy-system modelling approaches for guiding net-zero policies. Some helpful insights for @ipcc_ch WG3 and @theCCCuk.

Top takeaways for me (thread):

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
1) Fossil CCS is suited to 80% or 90% emissions reductions but not net zero, because CCS does not capture all the emissions where it’s installed. Energy system models (ESMs) still rely heavily on such techs, and may need to be updated to focus more on net-zero techs
2) ESMs generally assume a given level of energy service demands then find techs to meet them. Net zero requires a more transformative approach. Grubler & al (2018) + van Vuuren & al (2018) model reduced energy service demands - need more of this!
Read 8 tweets
Sep 23, 2020
Forensic analysis of #oil companies' climate plans by @kellyatrout in new @PriceofOil report: priceofoil.org/2020/09/23/big…

Relative to #ParisGoals they are all grossly insufficient on most metrics Image
TL;DR? Check out Kelly's blog: priceofoil.org/2020/09/23/big…
STL;DR? #Exxon and #Chevron manage to be grossly insufficient on all 10 metrics.

#BP is the least bad performer, partially aligned on 2 metrics, insufficient on 3, grossly insufficient on 5

#Shell, #Equinor & #Total have biggest gap between their green claims + reality
Read 4 tweets
Sep 19, 2020
With a week’s post-thesis holiday in Cornwall, I finally got round to reading Frank Snowden's Epidemics and Society. I found it absolutely gripping. A few things stand out for me from the historical experience (short thread) Image
1. Social stigmas tend to be greater when a disease is seen as “foreign” (eg plague) or affecting poor (cholera) or marginalised (HIV/AIDS) parts of society, compared to those that have been around for time (smallpox) or that affect elites (polio). Stigmas drive further spread
2. There’s a fascinating account of TB's transition from socially acceptable, even fashionable, to disgusting and stigmatising, that occurred with greater understanding of its infectiousness and as middle and upper classes adapted their behaviours to reduce infection.
Read 12 tweets
Jul 27, 2020
Great article by @ChloeFarand on how @IEABirol avoids addressing the contradiction at the heart of the @IEA: it wants to be relevant to the #energytransition but remains tied to #FossilFuels

IEA needs to #FixTheWEO

climatechangenews.com/2020/07/27/gre…
“IEA was set up and designed for a different era and it needs a radical transformation if it's still to have relevance in the modern era” - @KingsmillBond

“Given the IEA’s rhetoric and calls for leadership, omitting 1.5C is a pretty significant oversight” - @mckinnon_hannah
“By sitting on the fence and backing all forms of energy, there is a danger that they will perpetuate the unsustainable pathway we are on rather than showing what could be achieved in the future.” - @PWooders
Read 6 tweets
Jun 1, 2020
@Khaldunium Hi Khaldun. The problem is: to limit climate change to tolerable levels (e.g. Iraq is vulnerable to water shortage and extreme heat), most global fossil fuel extraction needs to end by 2050. But this will be much harder to do in countries like Iraq
@Khaldunium I agree oil is currently and historically central to public life in Iraq. I would say it has a cultural role as well as political and economic. So our paper tries to square these 2 realities: global limits vs some countries v dependent on oil/gas/coal
@Khaldunium Illustrated in this graph from our paper Image
Read 4 tweets
Feb 2, 2020
.@GeorgeMonbiot makes a good point in contrasting @theCCCuk's "no need to do more because this is enough to meet target" with UK policy to "maximise" oil extraction. But I don't agree that the problem is targets per se.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
1/
Rather, IMO the problem is the near-universal framing of climate mitigation that it will necessarily be costly, difficult and unpleasant, and therefore that the amount societies act to address it must be traded off against that cost and pain
/2
Almost all climate policymakers the insist that they should not do more than a certain amount, because of those costs.
/3
Read 14 tweets

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