Why is IEA’s fossil CO2 outlook clearly diverging from the high emission scenarios used in climate science and policy? Is it just reduced expectations for coal? We can see some reasons by looking at IEA WEO fossil projections vs. SSP no policy baselines for IPCC AR6 - oil ⬇️ 1/9 👆 Conversations about the realism of RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5 have emphasized how they are projecting a massive expansion in coal demand but these scenarios are also aggressive outlooks for oil - SSP5-8.5 anticipates 70% more oil production by mid-century than today - 2/9

Recently I reviewed how the 2019 IEA scenarios show the world is markedly diverging from IPCC no climate policy scenarios expecting >3˚C warming. Is this a fresh development reflecting a sudden new reality or has the world been following this path for a while? Thread: 1/13 👆 Looking at CO2 emissions from all the IEA current policy and announced policy scenarios since the last IPCC assessment a few things are clear - 2/13

Last week I reviewed how @IEA WEO 2019 scenarios suggest today’s policies are moving the world well away from >3˚ and now we’re tracking closer to 2˚ than ever ➡️ but does that claim stand up if we look at explicit IPCC climate policy scenarios more closely? Thread ⬇️ 1/6 📈➡️ 2040 both the IEA Current Policies Scenario (CPS) and IEA Stated Policies Scenario (SPS) are consistently aligned with outlooks for energy/industry CO2 emissions that do not exceed RCP4.5 ▶️ RCP4.5 is associated with +2.6˚C warming by 2100 vs. pre-industrial baseline - 2/6

With the recent @IEA World Energy Outlook 2019 release we can compare how the IEA reference case outlooks for carbon emissions stack up against the IPCC reference scenarios - are we far off track from avoiding warming >2˚C? Thread: 1/11 The IEA scenarios project developments in the global energy system through 2040 so we can look at CO2 emissions from energy and industry in that year across the sets of scenarios used for IPCC assessments. Thread: 2/11

New SSP-RCP database release provides excellent detail on CMIP6 scenarios which will produce an important evidence base of climate model results for the IPCC 6th Assessment - here’s how these CO2 emission scenarios compare against previous RCPs (dotted lines) - 1/13 thread A few things to note about specific scenarios in this thread - RCP8.5: the new SSP5-RCP8.5 scenario requires a much faster CO2 emission increase after 2030 than the old version used in IPCC AR5 - 2/13