Net zero city: The timeline of increasing urgency

Can the accelerating adoption of renewables counter slow global progress towards net zero? In the second of this three-part series, Langdon Morris, leader and senior partner, InnovationLabs and Farah Naz, director of ESG and innovation, Middle East and Africa, AECOM, chart changing attitudes towards climate change and renewables adoption in the last decade.

This article is the second of three excerpts from the book Net Zero City by Langdon Morris and Farah Naz.

In recent years there has been increasing awareness of the impending impacts and dangers caused by climate change, as the significant milestones noted below make quite clear.

The 2016 Paris Agreement stressed to the worldwide community the imperative to achieve a global zero balance between anthropogenic (human induced) greenhouse gas emissions and removals of CO₂ from the atmosphere by sinks of greenhouse gases by the second half of this century. This is also referred to as ‘carbon neutrality at a planetary level’.

Global carbon neutrality

The Paris Agreement is a landmark and thought-provoking global agreement that was adopted by 196 nations. World leaders committed to address the climate and biodiversity emergency in a legally binding international treaty whose goal is to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.

The Preamble to the Paris Agreement recognized the significant role that local governments must take in tackling climate change, noting that to be consistent with the objectives of the Agreement, cities must ramp up their capacity to drive rapid and systemic change. They need to position themselves on an ambitious emissions reduction trajectory to achieve carbon neutrality and climate resilience.

Two years later in October 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15). The report asserted that the current levels of commitments made by national governments were inadequate to meet the temperature target, and suggested a warming of between 2.9 and 3.4°C might be expected by 2100, unless progress to eliminate emissions is significantly accelerated.

Should their projection of 2.9 to 3.4°C be realized, this would have utterly devastating consequences for humanity and the planet. Food and water security for billions would be endangered, living standards would plummet, human health would decline significantly, and ecosystem services that we currently rely on would be severely endangered.

The report also stressed the need to shift from a target of 2˚ Celsius to a lower target of 1.5˚ Celsius in order to avoid the devastating impacts that a 2˚ rise would cause. It provided abundant data which stressed the urgency of an immediate ‘10 year’ window for action from 2020 to 2030, during which global CO₂ emissions need to be reduced by 45%.

The IPCC SR15 report of 2018 suggests that should we achieve Net Zero as late as 2048, scientists estimate that we have only a 50% chance that warming will stay below 1.5° Celsius, whereas achieving Net Zero by 2038 improves this chance to 67%.  All this depends on global emissions falling by about 75% relative to 2017 levels by 2030.

But for every year of inadequate progress, the time window required to reach Net Zero is two years shorter, meaning that for each year we delay, we have then to work twice as fast in our progress to Net Zero. Lack of action, in other words, carries a very heavy price tag in dollars, Euros, RMB, or any other currency you wish to name.

Shifting perspectives on climate change

Despite these warnings, progress in 2019 remained inadequate, and 11,000 scientists from 153 nations felt compelled to declare a Climate Emergency around the globe.  Already 2,011 civic and regional jurisdictions in 34 countries have done so, and the combined total populations living in these jurisdictions is more than 1 billion citizens. Thus, awareness of the Climate Emergency is now genuinely global.

Reflecting this global understanding, in January 2021 the United Nations released the results of a survey that reached 1.2 million respondents in 50 countries, the largest survey of public opinion on climate change ever conducted. They found that 64% of people agree that climate change is an emergency.

The International Renewable Energy Agency published its World Energy Transition Report, 1.5 Pathway in June 2021, which highlights three main points:

1. The costs of renewable technologies have plummeted to the point that new fossil-based electricity is no longer an attractive option from a purely financial perspective. Fossil fuel power is more expensive.
2. This progress in the power sector is already spilling over to end users, allowing us to realistically re-imagine the possibilities for society with the abundance of renewable options now at hand.
3. Based on this situation, the Report further suggests that the energy transition should be focused on accelerating development of renewable sources of energy and energy efficiency technologies, which is the only way global warming by 2050 would be limited to 1.5°C.

The International Energy Agency’s 2021 report Net Zero by 2050 builds on its unrivalled energy modelling tools and expertise, and describes more than 400 milestones to guide the global journey to Net Zero by 2050. Suggested actions include ending investment in new fossil fuel energy supply projects from today onward, and no further final investment decisions for new coal plants that do not include carbon capture systems. The report also suggests that by 2035 there should be no sales of new internal combustion engine passenger cars, and by 2040 the global electricity generation industry sector should reach Net Zero emissions.

In August 2021, the IPCC published Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, which provides still more stark warnings for the global community, and implores world leaders to act now.

Shifting perspectives on renewables

The UN Race to Zero campaign tracks commitments to reach Net Zero from a group of leading networks and initiatives across the climate action community. Its Upgrading Our Systems Together: 2030 Breakthroughs Report was also developed by a coalition of groups from across the climate action ecosystem, and highlights key milestones and actions that will contribute to significant progress.

The three main objectives are defined as:

1. By COP26 (November 2021, Glasgow), to reach Breakthrough Ambition whereby at least 20% of the key organizations in at least 10 economic sectors make firm Net Zero commitments.
2. By 2023, attain this level of ambition for all sectors.

By 2030, achieve Breakthrough Outcomes in all sectors of the global economy to deliver a zero carbon world in time.

This timeline clearly shows that the conversation has shifted significantly from 2016 until today. In 2016, climate change action leaders faced the need to push a message, and the renewables-centred approach espoused by IRENA and other groups was considered unrealistic, idealistic, and too futuristic. Yet the huge progress in the renewable energy industry has made that kind of talk irrelevant, and so by 2021 the urgent need is to transform knowledge into action, to shift from talk about change, to changing the global energy infrastructure.

Even some of the most change-resistant energy firms and climate skeptics are now realizing that the only realistic option for a climate-safe world requires moving away from ‘Business as Usual Fossil Fuel’ thinking, to the adoption of co-creative Net Zero business models built on the integration of technological innovation, business innovation, and social innovation.

Progress in renewables

And indeed there is progress. During the past decade, more renewable power was added to the grid annually than fossil fuel and nuclear power combined. According to IRENA, 260 gigawatts of renewables-based generation capacity was added globally in 2020, more than four times the capacity added from other sources. And as we noted above, renewable technologies now dominate the global energy market for new electricity generation capacity simply because they have become the cheapest sources of electricity in many markets.

But progress must continue to accelerate. The IEA 2050 Report calls for additions of solar photovoltaics to reach 630 gigawatts annually by 2030, a pace that is roughly equivalent to installing the world’s largest current solar park nearly every day. IEA calls for annual wind power installations to reach 390 gigawatts, four times the level achieved in 2020.

A major worldwide push to increase energy efficiency is also an essential part of these efforts. Achieving a global rate of energy efficiency improvements averaging 4% a year through 2030 is needed, which is about three times the annual average over the last two decades.

And while new installations accelerate, fossil fuels are also phased out on an accelerating timetable.