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Shell and BP’s plans to reduce carbon emissions will overshoot 1.5°C warming limit in the Paris Agreement by a ‘significant margin’

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Shell and BP’s plans to reduce carbon emissions will still overshoot the 1.5°C warming limit in the Paris Agreement by a ‘significant margin’, study warns

  • Fossil fuel firms’ projections don’t fit with Paris Agreement targets, study claims

  • Projections from the firms show ‘delayed reductions in fossil fuel consumption’ 

  • The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change 

Fossil fuel companies’ plans to reduce carbon emissions will still overshoot the 1.5°C warming limit in the Paris Agreement by a ‘significant margin’, a new study warns.

Researchers have studied the ‘decarbonisation scenarios’ outlined by vast energy companies Shell, BP and Equinor.

These scenarios are intended to predict future energy requirements, and what energy sources would be needed to supply them, in order to estimate resultant emissions.

Researchers claim that all the energy firms’ decarbonisation scenarios show ‘delayed reductions in fossil fuel consumption’ and run the risk of ‘overshooting vital climate goals’ laid out in the Paris Agreement.

Adopted in 2016, the Paris Agreement aims to hold an increase in global average temperature to below 2°C (3.6°F) and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C (2.7°F).

But decarbonisation scenarios produced by BP, Shell and Equinor are ‘incompatible’ with these goals for a safe and habitable planet, according to the study, and could lead to ‘catastrophic impacts’.

Hitting the Paris Agreement targets is seen as key to averting a planetary catastrophe, leading to devastation in the form of frequent climate disasters and millions of deaths.

The study was led by researchers at Climate Analytics and Imperial College London, and published today in Nature Communications.

‘Most of the scenarios we evaluated would be classified as inconsistent with the Paris Agreement,’ said study author Dr Robert Brecha at Climate Analytics.

‘They fail to limit warming to well below 2°C, let alone 1.5°C, and would exceed the 1.5°C warming limit by a significant margin.’

Fossil fuel companies have produced their own scenarios for future global energy consumption for decades, but the underlying assumptions of the scenarios to back up their claims that they’re consistent with the Paris Agreement are ‘not always clear’, the researchers say.

For example, in 2020, BP detailed multiple decarbonisation scenarios in a report, including ‘Net Zero’ and ‘Rapid’.

And in 2021, Shell released its emissions reduction plan, called ‘Sky 1.5’, that outlined how the world could meet the ‘well-below 2°C’ goal.

For the study, the experts analysed a total of six decarbonisation scenarios published between 2020 and mid-2021.

Four were from the energy firms (two from BP, one from Shell and one from Equinor), while another two were developed by the International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental organisation based in France.

Researchers calculated what the temperature outcomes for the six scenarios are and how they compare with temperature outcomes to the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

They found that five of the six scenarios assessed overshoot the 1.5°C (2.7°F) warming limit by a significant margin.

DECARBONISATION SCENARIOS

Decarbonisation scenarios are visions or scenarios of how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by replacing fossil fuels in the energy system.

They are produced by public, commercial and academic institutions and project what future energy requirements, and resultant emissions, would look like.

These scenarios inform planning across the globe by governments and other organisations aiming to determine how rapidly different sectors must reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Decarbonisation scenarios are built by predicting future energy requirements for different economic sectors, such as agriculture and manufacturing, and projecting what energy sources would be needed to supply them, such as fossil fuels, nuclear, or renewable power.

These projections of the future energy mix are then used to estimate what the resultant carbon emissions would be.

Fossil fuel companies have produced their own scenarios for future global energy consumption for decades, but the underlying assumptions of the scenarios to back up their claims that they’re consistent with the Paris Agreement are ‘not always clear’, the researchers say.

Source: Imperial College London

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