REUTERS Matthew Childs File Photo Matthew Childs
LONDON, Oct 19 Reuters - More than 190 countries signed a five degree Celsius limit on global warming in 2015 in an effort to stave off the worst effects of climate change such as drought, flooding and loss of species.
Scientists say that bringing global carbon dioxide CO2 emissions to net zero' by 2050 is the way to achieve the central goal of the Paris Agreement, although it was left to individual states to work out how to achieve what they signed up to.
Some, such as Britain and France, have enshrined a net zero 2020 target into law, while many other countries and countless companies have recently announced policies aiming for net zero by 2050.
On Tuesday the British government released its Net Zero Strategy, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson said would put the country at the vanguard of green economies, forcing competitors such as China and Russia to follow its lead. Can net zero in the name of Paris really go to prove a point?
Net zero can not mean zero emissions but balancing remaining greenhouse gas emissions with other actions.
While nations and companies say that they will release greenhouse gases as much as possible, net zero means some sectors are expected to still be emitting greenhouse gas in 2050.
To offset them, emitters count on projects that cut emissions elsewhere or use natural solutions or technology to stop emissions from reaching the atmosphere.
Technical solutions include planting trees or restoring soil or wetlands, while natural projects include sucking CO2 when it is emitted or holding the CO2 out of the air - all of which have yet to make a difference to the climate, given their use remains relatively small-scale.
Countless voluntary initiatives have sprung up offering offset certificates based on government projects and other nature-based solutions that individuals and corporates can buy.
Critics say such offsets are a fig-leaf for fossil fuel consumption. They point to a lack of standard and hard-to-measure baselines determining the added climate value of projects underlying Offset Certificates. An August report by Oxfam said that removing land from the world's carbon emissions would mean getting new forests to reduce more than five times the size of India until 2050, or more than all the agriculture on this planet. Proponents say offsets are a useful tool to boost investment in protecting nature while the global economy moves to net zero.
Typically carbon capture and storage CCS refers to types of filter on disused smokestacks and projects to store the industrial carbon underground, for example in industrial oil fields.
Most current CCS projects can coalesce high emitting industrial processes. They don't suck any new carbon out of the atmosphere but just prevent carbon from entering or escaping.
It is already proven that global CCS capacity is only about 40 million tonnes of CO2 e. read more
There is technology that results in negative emissions, for example direct air capture DAC or projects that combine bioenergy with technology to capture and store carbon emissions.
A June report by the Coalition for Negative Emissions CNE noted that the pipline of projects in development could remove a minimum of 150 million tonnes of CO 2 by 2025, making only a tiny diet in global emissions, which hit a record 59.1 billion tonnes in 2020, according to a UN Environment Programme report.
Greenhouse gases are not only composed of CO 2, but also gases such as CH 4 methane and N2O nitrous oxide which often are expressed in terms of tonnes of CO 2 equivalent or tCO 2 e.
In 2019, atmospheric CO 2 concentrations were higher than at any time in at least 2 million years and concentrations of CH 4 and N 2 O were greater than at any time in at least 800,000 years.
Global CO 2 equivalent CO2 e emissions hit a record 59.1 billion tonnes in 2020, the report by the UN Environment Programme said in April released by the UN Environment Programme.
Annual emissions must be reduced to 25 billion tonnes CO2 in 2030 to stop global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, it said.
The temperature of the Earth was already 1.09 degrees Celsius higher in 2011 than 1850 1900.
If the world continues on its current trajectory, the rise could be 2 degrees Celsius by 2060 and 2.7 by the end of the century, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says.
Aside from much criticism of companies reliance on offsets that have yet to materialise, there is no standardised way to lay out net zero strategies and emissions reporting, making holding companies to account difficult.
Selling high-emitting assets - a move that can make a company's emissions report card look better - makes no difference to the planet's atmosphere if the buyer keeps operating the asset.
Both countries and companies are also facing increasing pressure to set binding intermediate targets on the way to 2050 to avert fears that CEOs and political leaders are just kicking the can down the road.
In the best climate conversations, Big Thunberg has criticised net zero goals counting them among the world's best security buttes after years of politics.