The Sunday read on 1.5 degrees

This week the IEA updated their groundbreaking 1.5 degree Net Zero report. I was lucky enough to be a peer reviewer, and I want to explain in my own words what I think it means..

Yes we can still keep to 1.5 degrees! Were you ready to give up? So many people were - myself included. Tech - especially solar and electric cars - and an acceleration in the US, EU and China, have changed what is possible - even as the IEA have got real and scaled down their expectations for hydrogen and carbon capture. The future will be even more electric than was thought and sooner than was thought. How to make this happen?

We need to BUILD big and BUILD fast. That's an uncomfortable reality for some. Worse, we won't have time to do things perfectly. Solar panels will be put in stupid places, copper mines won't have all the safeguards, electric charging points will be hard to find at times, in some very windy hours electricity will be wasted, some carbon capture projects will be rubbish. There is no slack in the plan to do it slowly and perfectly.

We need to embrace this imperfection. We have no choice. People over the world are dying already, and most of them are people whose emissions are one fraction of ours. 1.5 degrees is a lot worse than what we are observing today, and 2 degrees is a lot lot worse implications that we can't afford to let happen.

As individuals, we need to make big, active choices to put solar panels on our roofs, to install a heat pump and to move to an electric car and do that quickly. These choices are not small lifestyle tweaks, they involve a lot of upfront money and energy to make happen. Today is a Sunday, a perfect day for thinking about a heat pump in your house!??

As governments, we need a huge step up in government capability not only to make sure we build big, but that WE DO IT WELL. All government departments need to be involved: we need to PLAN AND REGULATE for grids, land use, electric charging, storage, time of use tariffs, more installation engineers, lithium mines, wind auctions, and hydrogen emissions standards. They need to focus on how to keep the transition cheap and how to pass through savings to the consumers. Oh and they need to ban low efficiency air conditioners. If governments don’t roll their sleeves up, it will not only be done slower, BUT WITH TOO MANY unnecessary and painful mistakes.?

These are not bridging solutions, they are the real deal. WE ONLY NEED TO DO THIS ONCE. Once we've moved our heating away from gas, our cars away from oil, we are done. We will never look back.?

And of course it's not all about building building building. We need to use LESS ENERGY, we simply don't have time to build enough clean energy to use energy unchecked (and of course no "clean energy" source is 100% clean). Fortunately most of the these answers are simple and common sense and barely impede our quality of life: reduce (not eliminate) flying, don't superheat your home in winter or supercool in summer, don't drive super fast, ditch the tumble dryer for a clothes line, and buy smart (but please don't rely on offsets!). Don't sweat the small things, keep it 80/20, life is short please enjoy it;)

The biggest solutions at the global level are to triple renewable capacity by 2030 and double energy efficiency by 2030. And wow both solutions are already on the table, laid out by Al Jaber, the oil man leading COP28. We need governments to agree on these this December, they have no excuse. We also need a huge cut in fossil methane leaks and a huge step up in electrification, that need to be part of the deal. The IEA are clear that these 4 solutions alone give 80% of the CO2 cuts we need to see this decade.?

This can be CHEAPLY AND FAIRLY. For emerging countries, the IEA moved back net zero date from 2050 to “well after 2050”, leaving more carbon budget for them, and requiring advanced economies to go faster: 80% cuts in CO2 from 2022 to 2035. The transition in emerging countries has barely yet begun because they don’t have access to the same cheap capital we do - advanced economies need to support emerging economies with cheap grants (not loans) of $80-100 billion per year, the IEA says, mostly to Africa. Clean energy is more costly upfront, but there is no annual fuel bill - the IEA says this transition will SAVE us $12 trillion by 2050.?

Yes we need to ultimately phase out fossil fuels. But WE NEED DEEP CO2 CUTS THIS DECADE - 30% by 2030 and by an incredible 65% by 2035 (80% in advanced countries). Whether we keep to 1.5 degrees is NOT about whether the last drop of oil is burnt in 2050 or 2080, it is about how deep these CO2 cuts will be this decade and next.

The IEA shows no new fossil investment is needed, and also that fossil use will fall fast very soon BUT ONLY IF ENOUGH RENEWABLE ENERGY IS BUILT. Governments do not want another energy crunch - they will only legislate on fossil fuels when they know they can see renewable energy scaling fast enough. THE BEST CAMPAIGNING TO STOP FOSSIL FUELS IS TO CAMPAIGN TO SAY "YES".

This means YES IN MY BACKYARD. Get used pylons, solar panels and charging points, we will be living in an electric future.

That means SAYING "YES" TO SOLUTIONS - yes to bioenergy is good IF it is truly sustainable, yes to blue hydrogen is good IF it has near-zero emissions and leaks, and yes to nuclear IF it is safe. We shouldn't tolerate false solutions and greenwashing, but we don't have time to cancel technologies we don't like. We need everything, everywhere, all at once.?

That also means CORRECTING MISINFORMATION on solutions like electric cars and heat pumps, and also even critical minerals, which is causing anxiety in more populist camps and is ultimately holding back political ambition.

The biggest assumption the IEA makes is a huge dollop of human ingenuity, determination and urgency. Humans have this in unlimited quantities. Will we choose to use it?

The executive summary is only 5 pages, and probably has less words than this thread (I'm not usually so verbose). This document is the MOST IMPORTANT document we have on how to keep to 1.5 degrees, please do read it;) . //