Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Of the separate actions we modelled, the greatest contribution to health improvement was from home energy efficiency measures, such as wall and loft insulation (over 800,000 life years gained by 2050), assuming that adequate ventilation requirements are met.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has raised its global forecast for renewables growth in what it calls its “largest ever upward revision” for the sector.
Accounting for 37% of global carbon dioxide emissions, the built environment is a major part of the climate change problem. That also means it can and must be a key part of the solution.
The 13th annual Banking on Climate Chaos report exposes the stark disparity between public climate commitments being made by the world’s largest banks, and the reality of business-as-usual financing to the fossil fuel industry.
The achievement of net-zero emissions must be only a near-term intermediary step toward near zero emissions worldwide.
The economist Adam Tooze has an article on his newsletter assessing the cost of getting to net zero in Europe by 2050. It’s based on a close reading of a McKinsey report and a look at some of the assumptions in the technical report produced for the EU Commission.
In summary, the moral and prudential case for the UK to adopt a zero target sooner than 2050—perhaps as soon as 2030—appears to be a very strong one.
One after another politicians, business leaders, journalists and NGO advocates talk about “net zero 2050” and the 1.5°C Paris goal in the same breath, and get away with it.
The output of COP26 needs to be, as BreakThrough put it, “a ‘big minus’ in emissions, not ‘net zero’ emissions”. But it also needs to communicate acceptance an honest and a truthfulness, that the climate and ecological emergency goes far far deeper than just electric cars and heat pumps, it demands a fundamental reimagining of everything.
CAT began life as an off-grid test-bed community for experimenting with alternative types of technology and lifestyles in response to the 1970s oil crisis and an emerging concern about the environmental impacts of how we lived.
When advocates support NZ2050 they are tacitly supporting a dangerous agenda leading up to COP 26 in Glasgow that will codify an unsustainable pathway with continuing high fossil fuel use, dangerous “offset” trade-offs, and unacceptable risks of unstoppable climate warming.
The criticality of the global energy situation is emphasised by the release, on schedule (18-5-21), of the eagerly awaited “Net Zero by 2050” roadmap (NZE) from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
