A recent Bank of America (BAC) Global Research Report found that, within a 30-year period, global carbon emissions could reach zero at a cost of $5 trillion per year. The study explores the extent to which climate change can be battled and what the costs of such efforts would look like.
The consequences of climate change, the report said, will be dire and extreme. “This is the last decade to act,” the authors wrote. “Absolute water scarcity is likely for 1.8 billion people, 100 million face poverty, and 800 million are at risk from rising sea levels by 2025. Climate migration could reach 143 million from emerging markets, driven by extreme weather.”
Climate change mitigation measures, which have already been implemented in some parts of the world, will need to be drastically increased, the researchers found. In order to make significant changes, they contend, a complete global decarbonization must begin to take place within the next few decades.
“$5 trillion is [the amount of investment required to] fully decarbonize the world,” Global Strategist and Managing Director of Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Haim Israel said in an interview with Yahoo Finance. “It’s the annual number that will have to be the average for the next 30 years. Total investment is $150 trillion over the next 30 years, a massive number.”
Even in global terms and over a 30-year span, $150 trillion is a gargantuan amount. The latter number is almost twice the total global GDP in 2019, whereas the $5 trillion yearly figure would be equivalent to the entire U.S. tax base.
Israel, who was a co-author of the report, noted that while the $150 trillion cost is daunting, it’s necessary to reduce carbon emissions to zero and mitigate damage related to climate change.
“It’s the transition from emitting industries into cleaner industries [which creates this cost],” Israel said. “I think one of the lessons that we’re learning today during this whole crisis that we’re seeing with oil and gas prices is that the renewable energy capacity that was rolled out was not going hand in hand with storage.”
Producers which have been able to create enough wind or solar energy have encountered difficulties storing it, which has led to a more costly production process.
United Nations Climate Change Conference
The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, is set to begin on October 31 and last until November 12.
“We are expecting to see a global decarbonization plan [at COP26],” Israel said. “The last accord that was put in motion was, of course, the Paris Agreement, but it has to be updated.”
One of the specific proposals garnering interest is the unified carbon price. A carbon price is essentially a number which identifies the cost of greenhouse gas emissions to the public. Such a figure could prove useful in providing the foundations for calculations of climate change costs to use in policy measures. Israel noted that he would be watching carefully to see if world leaders could agree on a carbon price, and if so, what that price would be.
A power-generating windmill turbine is seen in front of the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs Elysees avenue in Paris ahead of the COP21 World Climate Summit, France, November 25, 2015. The upcoming conference of the 2015 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) will start on November 30, 2015 at Le Bourget near the French capital. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
What would $5 trillion a year be spent on?
The $5 trillion yearly figure accounts for the replacement of carbon-emitting technologies and industries with more environmentally-friendly substitutes over time. Green energy has gotten significantly cheaper over the past decades, the authors noted.
“Exponential cost reductions in wind, solar and batteries technologies have made renewables the cheapest form of energy in areas producing >90% of global electricity,” they said. “Market appetite is chipping in too. Labelled bonds and loans jumped to > $3 trillion this year, with $3 in every $10 of flows into global equities going into ESG, which will support climate-friendly investments, as well as funding new ones needed to further decarbonize our planet like green mining, green hydrogen or carbon capture. Finally, we see central and commercial bank balance sheets funding rising by c. $500 billion.”
Converting to green technology, while costly, would be cheaper than continuing to rely on fossil fuels in the long run, Israel said. “It’s also that today renewable energy is cheaper, which we spoke about, there’s an economic incentive to renewable energy, we believe that the green economy will create 42 million jobs. That’s huge. And I don’t think it’s going to come at the expense of oil and gas all together; we are still gonna be with fossil fuel industry for a very long time. It’s just going to be to diversify our energy sources.”
Bitcoin: Far from a ‘green’ currency
One of the more interesting tidbits in the report, especially for crypto enthusiasts, was that a single bitcoin has a carbon footprint of 270 tons, the equivalent of 60 internal combustion engine cars. “Bitcoin today is consuming more and more electricity because bitcoin right now is so widely used and mined, it’s just generating and consuming more and more electricity,” Israel said.
The mining process for bitcoin has been a source of controversy in the past, due to the intense computing power it requires. After China banned bitcoin mining back in May, much of the activity moved to the United States. Some 17% of mining now occurs in the US. Some of the geographical features of Bitcoin mining which have changed as a result of China’s ban may reduce its carbon footprint, a 2021 Cambridge University study found.
In recent years, Israel said, the discussion surrounding decarbonization has moved from debating “if” we need to decarbonize the planet to debating “how” the process should occur, what exactly the needs are, and how much money ought to be allocated. “We are hoping to get one unified global plan, eventually,” Israel said.
The theme of this year’s Earth Day is “Planet vs. Plastics” – a theme chosen to raise awareness of the damage done by plastic to humans, animals and the planet and to promote policies aiming to reduce global plastic production by 60 percent by 2040.
As our chart shows, global plastics use has increased rapidly over the past few decades, growing 250 percent since 1990 to reach 460 million tonnes in 2019, according to the OECD’s Global Plastics Outlook, which projects another 67-percent increase in global plastics use by 2040 and for the world’s annual plastic use to exceed one billion tonnes by 2052. As our chart shows, packaging is the largest driver of global plastics use, which is why a rapid phasing out of all single use plastics by 2030 is one of the policy measures proposed under EARTHDAY.ORG’s 60X40 framework.
Other major applications of plastics include building and construction, transportation as well as textiles, with the fast fashion industry particularly guilty of adding to the world’s plastic footprint. “The fast fashion industry annually produces over 100 billion garments,” the Earth Day organizers write. “Overproduction and overconsumption have transformed the industry, leading to the disposability of fashion. People now buy 60 percent more clothing than 15 years ago, but each item is kept for only half as long.” Most importantly, the organization points out that 85 percent of disposed garments end up in landfills or incinerators, while just 1 percent are being recycled.
Felix Richter is a Data Journalist
This article was first published in the Statista.com.
Algeria’s Tassili N’Ajjer plateau is Africa’s largest national park. Among its vast sandstone formations is perhaps the world’s largest art museum. Over 15,000 etchings and paintings are exhibited there, some as much as 11,000 years old according to scientific dating techniques, representing a unique ethnological and climatological record of the region.
Curiously, however, these images do not depict the arid, barren landscape that is present in the Tassili N’Ajjer today. Instead, they portray a vibrant savannah inhabited by elephants, giraffes, rhinos and hippos. This rock art is an important record of the past environmental conditions that prevailed in the Sahara, the world’s largest hot desert.
These images depict a period approximately 6,000-11,000 years ago called the Green Sahara or North African Humid Period. There is widespread climatological evidence that during this period the Sahara supported wooded savannah ecosystems and numerous rivers and lakes in what are now Libya, Niger, Chad and Mali.
This greening of the Sahara didn’t happen once. Using marine and lake sediments, scientists have identified over 230 of these greenings occurring about every 21,000 years over the past eight million years. These greening events provided vegetated corridors which influenced species’ distribution and evolution, including the out-of-Africa migrations of ancient humans.
These dramatic greenings would have required a large-scale reorganisation of the atmospheric system to bring rains to this hyper arid region. But most climate models haven’t been able to simulate how dramatic these events were.
As a team of climate modellers and anthropologists, we have overcome this obstacle. We developed a climate model that more accurately simulates atmospheric circulation over the Sahara and the impacts of vegetation on rainfall.
We identified why north Africa greened approximately every 21,000 years over the past eight million years. It was caused by changes in the Earth’s orbital precession – the slight wobbling of the planet while rotating. This moves the Northern Hemisphere closer to the sun during the summer months.
This caused warmer summers in the Northern Hemisphere, and warmer air is able to hold more moisture. This intensified the strength of the West African Monsoon system and shifted the African rainbelt northwards. This increased Saharan rainfall, resulting in the spread of savannah and wooded grassland across the desert from the tropics to the Mediterranean, providing a vast habitat for plants and animals.
Our results demonstrate the sensitivity of the Sahara Desert to changes in past climate. They explain how this sensitivity affects rainfall across north Africa. This is important for understanding the implications of present-day climate change (driven by human activities). Warmer temperatures in the future may also enhance monsoon strength, with both local and global impacts.
Earth’s changing orbit
The fact that the wetter periods in north Africa have recurred every 21,000 years or so is a big clue about what causes them: variations in Earth’s orbit. Due to gravitational influences from the moon and other planets in our solar system, the orbit of the Earth around the sun is not constant. It has cyclic variations on multi-thousand year timescales. These orbital cycles are termed Milankovitch cycles; they influence the amount of energy the Earth receives from the sun.
On 100,000-year cycles, the shape of Earth’s orbit (or eccentricity) shifts between circular and oval, and on 41,000 year cycles the tilt of Earth’s axis varies (termed obliquity). Eccentricity and obliquity cycles are responsible for driving the ice ages of the past 2.4 million years.
The third Milankovitch cycle is precession. This concerns Earth’s wobble on its axis, which varies on a 21,000 year timescale. The similarity between the precession cycle and the timing of the humid periods indicates that precession is their dominant driver. Precession influences seasonal contrasts, increasing them in one hemisphere and reducing them in another. During warmer Northern Hemisphere summers, a consequent increase in north African summer rainfall would have initiated a humid phase, resulting in the spread of vegetation across the region.
Eccentricity and the ice sheets
In our study we also identified that the humid periods did not occur during the ice ages, when large glacial ice sheets covered much of the polar regions. This is because these vast ice sheets cooled the atmosphere. The cooling countered the influence of precession and suppressed the expansion of the African monsoon system.
The ice ages are driven by the eccentricity cycle, which determines how circular Earth’s orbit is around the sun. So our findings show that eccentricity indirectly influences the magnitude of the humid periods via its influence on the ice sheets. This highlights, for the first time, a major connection between these distant high latitude and tropical regions.
The Sahara acts as a gate. It controls the dispersal of species between north and sub-Saharan Africa, and in and out of the continent. The gate was open when the Sahara was green and closed when deserts prevailed. Our results reveal the sensitivity of this gate to Earth’s orbit around the sun. They also show that high latitude ice sheets may have restricted the dispersal of species during the glacial periods of the last 800,000 years.
Our ability to model the African humid periods helps us understand the alternation of humid and arid phases. This had major consequences for the dispersal and evolution of species, including humans, within and out of Africa. Furthermore, it provides a tool for understanding future greening in response to climate change and its environmental impact.
Refined models may, in the future, be able to identify how climate warming will influence rainfall and vegetation in the Sahara region, and the wider implications for society.
Edward Armstrong is a postdoctoral research fellow, University of Helsinki
A new draft text on global stocktake has been published at the UN climate summit, COP28 UAE, on Wednesday morning. While the draft text does not contain the words “phase out”, it includes reference to transitioning away from all fossil fuels to enable the world to reach net zero by 2050.
The text published by the UN’s climate body calls on parties to accelerate and substantially reduce non-carbon dioxide emissions worldwide with a focus on reducing methane emissions by 2030. “We all want to get the most ambitious outcome possible,” Majid Al Suwaidi, COP28 Director-General, said on Tuesday.
The text, published early Wednesday, does not specifically refer to oil, but mentions the need to ‘phase-down’ coal. It says that it recognises the need for ‘deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5C pathways and calls on Parties to contribute to global efforts.
Among those efforts it recognises the need to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 and doubling the annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by the same date. It also recognises the need to accelerate the phase-down of coal and accelerate towards net zero energy systems, utilising zero or low carbon fuels by mid century.
While the document does not mention oil or combustion engines, it does recognises the need for accelerating the reduction of emissions from road transport on a range of pathways, including through development of infrastructure and rapid deployment of zero and low-emission vehicles. It also recognises the need to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible.
Finance specifics
On the subject of finance, the document said developed countries should continue to take the lead in mobilising climate finance from a wide variety of sources, instruments and channels, noting the significant role of public funds, through a variety of actions, including supporting country-driven strategies, and taking into account the needs and priorities of developing countries.
Such mobilisation of climate finance should represent a progression beyond previous efforts, the text said. It may provide small comfort to campaigners from developing countries who implored Parties to begin the phase out of fossil fuels and provide vastly improved access to funding for renewables.
The document highlights the persistent gap and challenges in technology development and transfer and the uneven pace of adoption of climate technologies around the world.
It further urges Parties to address these barriers and strengthen cooperative action, including with non-Party stakeholders, particularly with the private sector, to rapidly scale up the deployment of existing technologies, the fostering of innovation and the development and transfer of new technologies.
It also emphasizes the ongoing challenges faced by many developing country Parties in accessing climate finance and encourages further efforts, including by the operating entities of the Financial Mechanism, to simplify access to such finance, in particular for those developing country Parties that have significant capacity constraints, such as the least developed countries and small island developing States.
