Our greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for the global warming we are currently experiencing. It’s a fact. And today, researchers remind us – once again – that if we hope to limit this warming, we will have to reduce our production of fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) by 3% per year until 2050. .
Green bonds. This is the means imagined by Europe to finance the post-Covid recovery plan. And Johannes Hahn, the Budget Commissioner, has just announced that these obligations will exclude projects from nuclear plant – 12 g of CO2/ kWh produced, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -, but will be able to finance gas power stations – 490 g of CO2/ kWh. An announcement that may seem surprising even though prestigious researchers University College London (UCL, UK) claim that if we hope to meet our climate targets, global production of oil and gas will have to fall by 3% per year until 2050.
These conclusions only add to those of the IPCC or those of the International Energy Agency (IEA). All these experts seem to agree that the emissions current and future greenhouse gas emissions, if production trajectories remain what they are, push us, in matter from limitation of global warming, in the wrong direction.
Probably underestimated estimates
The work of UCL researchers is based on a model of the global energy system. This integrates all sources of energy primary, from production to conversion and distribution to meet a variety of demands. It also divides the world into 16 large regions, to give more finesse to the results. And he can assess different scenarios.
Overall, 60% of oil reserves and fossil gas in 2018 and nearly 90% of coal that should be successfully left in the soil by 2050. “And again, our estimates are probably underestimated, given that we are using a budget carbone compatible with only a 50% chance of reaching 1.5 ° C and the enormous uncertainty surrounding the deployment of negative emission technologies ”, points out Dan Welsby, lead author of the study, in a communiqué of the UCL. But he reassures us. “We technically know how to do it. “ It remains to be seen when the political will will follow …
To save the climate, a third of the oil will have to stay in the ground
Global warming is a worrying phenomenon, but just as much is the scarcity of fossil energy sources. The lack of oil should seriously impact our civilization first and foremost. The best way to fight climate change would still be to leave a good part of the fossil fuels remaining in the ground.
Article by Laurent Sacco published on 01/14/2015
The energy crisis seems more worrying in the short term than that of the global warming. Yet it is the latter which remains the most threatening for humanity. Indeed, the use of renewable energies, in particular solar energy, should ultimately allow us to continue to operate our societies. In the second half of the XXIe century the industrial exploitation of controlled fusion may even have gone from dream to reality.
On the other hand, observers are likely to be much less optimistic about climate change if the global average temperature of the planet increases by two degrees. Beyond that, it seems that nothing more guarantees the stability of the climate which could change in a catastrophic and lasting way, in particular if we take into account the climate bomb that perhaps represent the methane seeps. Techniques are however being developed to capture and sequester carbon dioxide and thus limit the greenhouse effect caused by CO emissions2 by industry.
To fight global warming, we will probably have to do without our conventional cars before the oil reserves run out. © Stéphane Pouyllau, Flickr, CC by-nc-sa 2.0
A limit of one trillion tonnes of CO2 in the air
But even so, if we are to believe a study in Nature and carried out by Christophe McGlade and Paul Ekins, two members of the Institute for Sustainable Resources at the famous University College London (UCL), it is not possible to achieve the objective set by the experts of the IPCC – limit global warming to an increase in global temperature of two degrees – without refusing to touch part of the stock of fossil fuels still in the bowels of the planet. This is what Christophe McGlade proclaims when he says: “Politicians must realize that their instinct of using fossil fuels available on their territory is incompatible with their commitment to meet the 2 ° C target”.
Indeed, according to the IPCC, men can no longer afford to inject into theatmosphere that a quantity of carbon dioxide less than that which would carry its CO content2 to about 1,000 billion tonnes of this greenhouse gas. However, the exploitation of hydrocarbons and coal still in the soil of the Terre would lead to the release of 3,000 billion tonnes of CO2 about.
According to the two men, therefore, oil producers in the Middle East must give up exploiting nearly 40% of their oil reserves and China, the United States and Russia, most of their coal. At the scale of the planet, it would even be necessary to refuse to exploit a third of the oil reserves, half of the gas reserves and more than 80% of the coal. And this until 2050. The need to find alternatives to fossil fuels is therefore becoming more and more pressing.
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