EXPLAIN THE NEWS

Scientists made a detailed roadmap for

meeting the Paris climate goals. Its eye-
opening.
Updated by Brad Plumer @bradplumer brad@vox.com Mar 23, 2017, 2:55pm EDT

Where were going, we definitely need roadmaps. | (Shutterstock)

In 2015, the worlds governments met in Paris and agreed to keep global warming below
2C, to avoid the very worst risks of a hotter planet. See here for background on why, but
thats the goal. For context, the planets warmed ~1C since the 19th century.

One problem with framing the goal this way, though, is that its maddeningly abstract. What
does staying below 2C entail? Papers on this topic usually drone on about a carbon
budget the total amount of CO2 humans can emit this century before we likely bust
past 2C and then debate how to divvy up that budget among nations. Theres a lot of
math involved. Its eye-glazing, and hard to translate into actual policy. Its also a long-term
goal, a distant target, easy for policymakers to shrug off.
So, not surprisingly, countries have thus far responded by putting forward a welter of vague
pledges on curbing emissions that are hard to compare and definitely dont add up to
staying below 2C. Everyone agrees more is needed, but theres lots of uncertainty as to
what more means. Few people grasp how radically or how quickly wed have to
revamp the global economy to meet the Paris climate goals.

Surely theres a better, more concrete way to think about whats required here. And a new
study out today tries to do just that. Fair warning: Its jaw-dropping.

A simple (but daunting!) road map for staying below 2C

In a new paper for Science, a group of European researchers lay out a more vivid way to
frame the climate challenge with details on what would have to happen in each of the
next three decades if we want to stay well below 2C.

They start with the big picture: To hit the Paris climate goals without geoengineering, the
world has to do three broad (and incredibly ambitious) things:

1) Global CO2 emissions from energy and industry have to fall in half each decade. That is,
in the 2020s, the world cuts emissions in half. Then we do it again in the 2030s. Then we do
it again in the 2040s. Its simple but staggering. They dub this the carbon law. Lead author
Johan Rockstrm told me they were thinking of an analogy to Moores law for transistors,
and well see why.

2) Net emissions from land use i.e., from agriculture and deforestation have to fall
steadily to zero by 2050. This would need to happen even as the world population grows
and were feeding ever more people.

3) Technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere have to start scaling up
massively, until were artificially pulling 5 gigatons of CO2 per year out of the atmosphere by
2050 nearly double what all the worlds trees and soils already do.
(Rockstrom et al, 2017)

Its way more than adding solar or wind, says Rockstrm. Its rapid decarbonization, plus
a revolution in food production, plus a sustainability revolution, plus a massive engineering
scale-up [for carbon removal].

So, uh, how do we cut CO2 emissions in half, then half again, then half again? Here, the
authors lay out a sample roadmap of what specific actions the world would have to take
each decade, based on current research. This isnt the only path for making big CO2 cuts,
but it gives a sense of the sheer scale and speed required:

2017-2020: All countries would prepare for the herculean task ahead by laying vital policy
groundwork. Like: scrapping the $500 billion per year in global fossil fuel subsidies. Zeroing
out investments in any new coal plants, even in countries like India and Indonesia. All major
nations commit to going carbon-neutral by 2050 and put in place policies like carbon
pricing or clean electricity standards that point down that path. By 2020, the paper
adds, all cities and major corporations in the industrialized world should have
decarbonization strategies in place.

2020-2030: Now the hard stuff begins! In this decade, carbon pricing would expand to
cover most aspects of the global economy, averaging around $50 per ton (far higher than
seen almost anywhere today) and rising. Aggressive energy efficiency programs ramp up.
Coal power is phased out in rich countries by the end of the decade and is declining sharply
elsewhere. Leading cities like Copenhagen are going totally fossil fuel free. Wealthy
countries no longer sell new combustion engine cars by 2030, and transportation gets
widely electrified, with many short-haul flights replaced by rail.

In addition, spending on clean energy research increases by an order of magnitude this

decade, with a sustained focus on developing new batteries, drastically reducing the cost
of carbon capture and storage (CCS), and perfecting low-carbon processes for producing
steel and concrete, plus improving smart grids, greener aircraft systems, and sustainable
urbanization techniques.

Meanwhile, efforts to start pulling carbon dioxide out of the air start this decade. That
means reforesting degraded land and deploying technologies such as direct-air capture or
bioenergy with CCS to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere. By 2030, wed need to be
removing 100 to 500 megatons of CO2 each year and have a sense of how to scale up.

2030-2040: By this decade, hopefully, were reaping the fruits of major technological
advances in clean energy. Leading countries like Denmark and Sweden should now have
completely carbon-free grids and have electrified virtually all of their transport, heating,
and industry. Cars with internal combustion engines will have become rare on roads
worldwide. (Let that sink in.) Aircraft will be almost entirely powered by carbon-neutral
fuels, say, biofuels or hydrogen. New building construction will be largely carbon-neutral, by
using emissions-free methods for steel and concrete or through other techniques. And
radical new energy generation solutions will enter the market.
Meanwhile, wed need to be sucking about 1 to 2 gigatons of CO2 from the air each year,
with a heavy R&D effort on expanding that further.

2040-2050: By the early 2040s, major European countries are close to carbon-neutral,
and the rest of the world is moving toward that goal by the end of the decade. Electricity
grids are nearly entirely carbon-free: Natural gas still provides some back up energy, but
CCS ensures its carbon footprint is limited. Modular nuclear reactors may contribute to the
energy mix in some places. Lower-income countries are still using some fossil fuels, and
the world is still emitting a small bit of CO2 in 2050 (about one-eighth the amount of
today), but work continues on eventually phasing that out.

Finally, by 2050, wed need to be removing more than 5 gigatons of CO2 per year from the
atmosphere. Its possible this is simply impractical if we tried to do that all by burning
biomass for energy and sequestering the resulting carbon (a negative emissions
process), we might well run into serious land constraints that hinder agriculture. If, in the
2020s, we realize this will be the case, then well have to revamp the road map to cut CO2
emissions from energy and industry even faster.

The paper also notes that the precise details of any road map will be tentative after all,
the nature of unpredictable technological change means its difficult to say what the world
will look like in 2030 or 2040 or 2050. So policymakers will need to meet regularly, take
stock of where they are, and revise as needed.

This road map is staggering. Thats the point.

Faster! | (Shutterstock)

Itd be entirely understandable to look at this all and say, Thats insane. Phasing out sales
of combustion engine vehicles by 2030? Carbon-neutral air travel within two decades?
Cities going entirely fossil fuelfree in the next 13 years? Come on.

And fair enough. None of this is easy. It might well prove impossible. But this is roughly
what staying well below 2C entails at least without large-scale geoengineering to
filter out sunlight and cool the planet (a risky step). This is what world governments
implicitly agreed to when they all signed on to the Paris accord.

We wanted to show what meeting those Paris goals requires, says Rockstrm. Up until
now, we felt that scientists havent been very effective in communicating what these
carbon budgets actually mean in terms of concrete action.
Rockstrm and his colleagues argue that future UN climate talks should strive to create a
much more detailed decade-by-decade road map along the lines of their Science paper, in
order to gain much more clarity on what needs to happen to stay below 2C.

Rockstrm adds that the road maps sheer difficulty doesnt mean climate action is
hopeless. You could just as easily see this becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, he says.
Countries start taking these targets seriously and then begin pursuing the innovation
needed to make this come true. Thats what Moores law did for the semiconductor
industry; the prediction that chip performance would double every 18 months helped
guide firms in thinking what they needed to do to make that come true. A carbon law,
Rockstrm argues, could do the same for countries and cities and companies.

Oliver Geden a German climate policy analyst who wasnt involved in the Science paper
but who has criticized scientists and policymakers for obscuring what the 2C target
really requires praised the broad approach here, though noted that some of the details
were debatable.

One thing I like is that this is not just another global calculation [on CO2 emissions] that
doesnt talk about actors or policies, Geden told me by email. I think this should be the
way forward, translating [overarching climate goals] into policy portfolios and then asking
policymakers if they are going to do it or not.

For example, the paper lays out a specific timeline for deploying technology to remove
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Most modeling scenarios for staying below 2C now
envision massive CO2 removal efforts, but few policymakers have acknowledged this
fact. Presenting them with a detailed proposed timeline could, hopefully, change that. If it
turns out that scaling up bioenergy with CCS is logistically impossible (as it might be),
then at least wed come to terms with that sooner, rather than keeping it as an unspoken
background assumption in broad climate plans.

Of course, its possible that if policymakers really grappled with what staying below 2C
entails, they might come away thinking its impractical or undesirable. They might decide
that maybe we should aim to stay below 2.5C or 3C, and just try to deal with the severe
risks of a hotter planet, from higher sea level rise droughts to crop failures, that come with
it. (Ive written more on that here.)

But something has to force that conversation. If this 2C climate goal is going to loom over
every international climate meeting, every white paper and discussion, then the least
people can do is take it seriously.

Further reading
Here is a history of the 2C global warming target and what it would mean to miss it.
And note that no country in the world is currently taking the goal seriously.

This new paper by Jesse Jenkins and Samuel Thernstrom looks at the research around
achieving deep decarbonization in the electricity sector. Note that while it might be
physically possible to decarbonize the grid using only renewables, a number of studies
suggest itd be much more cost-effective to harness nuclear power or coal/gas with
carbon capture and storage as well.

The Science paper is also a good framework for thinking about Donald Trump. Trump,
recall, wants to dismantle US climate policies and slash clean energy research. In the
short term, that probably wont hamper the incremental decline in US emissions already
underway, as natural gas and renewables keep pushing out coal in the power sector. But
Trumps policies could easily hinder the push for deep decarbonization in the US or at
least delay it until well after 2020, making the 2C goal all the harder.

Over at Carbon Brief, Jocelyn Timperly dissects a new International Energy Agency
report showing how we might stay on a 2C pathway. It gets at the problem a little
differently (and mainly focuses on short-term energy policies), but is basically compatible
with the Science papers analysis.

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