The US could meet its pledge to cut emissions under the Paris Agreement through “natural climate solutions” (NCS), a new study suggests.
NCS comprise a group of techniques – such as reforestation, seagrass restoration and fire management – that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, or boost carbon uptake from land and wetlands through changes to the way they are managed.
While the US has already made progress towards its Paris pledge, NCS has the potential to provide the remaining emissions reductions needed by 2025, the researchers say.
However, this would require a carbon price of around $100 per tonne to incentivise the use of NCS, the researchers estimate. And the measures would only be enough to meet the US’s pledge whereas global commitments need to be “roughly tripled” in order to meet the terms of the Paris Agreement, the lead author tells Carbon Brief.
The research, which involves 38 researchers from 22 institutions, was led by scientists at the Nature Conservancy, an environmental NGO.
Natural climate solutions
As the special report on 1.5C from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledges, meeting the 1.5C limit without overshooting will require “negative emissions” – techniques that remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it on land, underground or in the oceans.
To achieve this, the integrated assessment models (IAMs) that generate emission pathways for 1.5C generally rely on large amounts of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). This technique involves burning biomass – such as trees and crops – to generate energy and then capturing the resulting CO2 emissions.
Read more at US Could Meet Paris Emissions Pledge With ‘Natural Climate Solutions’, Study Says
According to the International Energy Agency, “2018 is the year of electricity” and global electricity supply “is being transformed by the rise of renewables”.
“Electricity has been the fastest growing element of final demand and is set to grow much faster than energy consumption as a whole over the next 25 years,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA’s Executive Director.
Speaking yesterday at the launch in London of the IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook (WEO), Birol noted that the power sector now attracts more investment than oil and gas combined – a major shift for the energy market. And it also marks a similar shift for the IEA itself – for the first time, it devotes several chapters in the weighty WEO to electric power.IEA launches WEO and says “2018 is the year of electricity”
The WEO states that global electricity supply “is being transformed by the rise of renewables, putting electricity at the centre of the response to a range of environmental challenges”.
It stresses that “increasing digitalization of the global economy is going hand-in-hand with electrification, making the need for electricity for daily living more essential than ever. Electricity is increasingly the ‘fuel’ of choice for meeting the energy needs of households and companies.”
In what it calls its New Policies Scenario, the IEA forecasts that between now and 2040, nearly 90 per cent of electricity demand growth will be in developing countries, while demand in advanced economies will come on the back of policies promoting the electrification of mobility and heat.
In this scenario, it adds that by 2040, electricity demand in China will be more than twice that of the US, “with India a not-too-distant third”.
And the IEA notes that the potential for further electrification from today “is huge”: 65 per cent of final energy use could technically be met by electricity – today’s figure is 19 per cent.
Birol also confirmed that for the first time, the total number of people with no access to electricity has fallen below 1 billion, driven in large part by the rural electrification efforts of the India government.
And this kind of government intervention will increase, predicts the IEA. It advises that governments will have a critical influence in the direction of the future energy system, far more so than in recent years.
“Over 70 per cent of global energy investments will be government-driven and as such the message is clear – the world’s energy destiny lies with government decisions,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA’s Executive Director.
Read more at Electricity Is the ‘New Fuel of Choice’ Says IEA
With window units set to more than triple by 2050, home air conditioning is on pace to add half a degree Celsius to global warming this century, a new report says.
Increasing demand for home air conditioning driven by global warming, population growth and rising incomes in developing countries could increase the planet's temperatures an additional half a degree Celsius by the end of the century, according to a new report by the Rocky Mountain Institute.
The demand is growing so fast that a "radical change" in home-cooling technology will be necessary to neutralize its impact, writes RMI, an energy innovation and sustainability organization.
Fast-Rising Demand for Air Conditioning Is Adding to Global Warming. The Numbers Are Striking.
Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) could build up to 50 million electric cars on its new electric vehicle platform and is looking at expanding its manufacturing footprint in the United States, Chief Executive Herbert Diess told Automotive News.
“We set up the plant in Chattanooga always with the idea to be able to grow it, to mirror it,” Diess was quoted as saying.
“The plant is still too small, and we are considering different options - it might be electric cars, it might be a different derivative of the Atlas (SUV) - it’s still open.”
Volkswagen (VW) and Ford are looking at expanding cooperation, mainly in commercial vehicles, Diess added.
Read more at VW Could Build Up to 50 Million Electric Cars: Automotive News
