Everything you need to know about Net Zero Emissions

The talk in the run-up to the UN climate talks in Paris this December will be on cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. But by how much? What percentage of reduction of the nasties in the atmosphere is enough?

Some national governments, as well as some companies, have been talking about making 30 per cent cuts in pollution by 2020, and then reducing GHGs by 50 per cent by the middle of the century. On the face of it these commitments seem impressive and bold, but think about it for a moment.

If the baseline – the point from which the measurements are being made – is not altogether great, then the percentage target being set is kind of irrelevant. For a company that has consistently pumped out a huge amount of carbon, committing to reduce its pollution by any sort of magnitude, while commendable, is still not good enough. And it’s certainly not going to do much in the way of keeping the planet from heating up by more than 2 degrees, the scientifically agreed threshold after which the impacts of global warming will be catastrophic. 

There’s a solution to this problem. It’s known as targeting net-zero emissions and more and more companies, NGOs, policymakers and scientists believe it is the real answer to the global warming challenge. In a nutshell, this is about committing to completely cut carbon pollution entirely within a generation.

There’s a solution to this problem. It’s known as targeting net-zero emissions and more and more companies, NGOs, policymakers and scientists believe it is the real answer to the global warming challenge. In a nutshell, this is about committing to completely cut carbon pollution entirely within a generation.

The concept was first bandied about last year when the latest assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was published. Since then, a number of energy policy experts have translated the required global GHG reduction ambition into something very simple indeed: to phase out carbon emissions entirely. It certainly focuses the mind in a way that varying percentage reduction commitments from governments and businesses never could.

And most net-zero advocates believe the world can get there by 2050. That’s certainly the view of The B Team, a group of prominent business leaders including Virgin Founder, Richard Branson and Unilever CEO, Paul Polman. “Taking bold action on climate change simply makes good business sense. Setting a net-zero GHG emissions target by 2050 will drive innovation, grow jobs, build prosperity and secure a better world for what will soon be 9 billion people. Why would we wait any longer to do that?” Richard Branson says
 

 

 

Okay, so there might be some wriggle room in how ‘net zero’ is defined going forward, with some emissions offset by the planting of more trees (to suck up the CO2) or by using technologies like carbon capture and storage (to keep the pollution from entering the atmosphere).

Taking bold action on climate change simply makes good business sense

But could it really be possible that by the time today’s toddlers have popped their clogs, the world would be entirely free of carbon emissions?

 

 

 

Not surprisingly, a number of nations that have vested interests in dirty fossil fuel industries, like Saudi Arabia, say its “unrealistic”.

So too do big oil and gas companies like BP, Shell and Exxon. Shell’s climate change advisor David Hone said that achieving net zero emissions by 2050 is “not really practical,” arguing on his blog that while the Paris agreement should certainly be geared around an end-goal of net-zero emissions, negotiators need to be realistic. “The time span for this is 80+ years, not 35 years.”

Meanwhile, in its latest annual forecast, BP expects carbon emissions to rise another 25 per cent by the year 2035, making it all but impossible to reach net zero by 2050.

Read more from our climate change content series as we explore everything you need to know in the run up to Paris 2015.

 

Source : ‪#‎climatechange ;  http://virg.in/CJ4Dc