The third and final installment of the sixth UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, published Monday, shows how renewable energy sources like wind and solar are now economically viable and becoming cheaper by the day.
If the world doesn't strengthen its policies toward renewable energy, global warming could blow through the 1.5 degree-Celsius threshold that scientists have warned of and surpass 3 degrees by the end of the century, the report's scientists said. The planet is already around 1.1 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels.
And the amount of electricity generated by renewables is growing rapidly. A recent report by climate think tank Ember showed the world generated a record-setting 10% of its energy from wind and solar 2021. The International Energy Agency said in a recent report that renewable energy capacity grow by more than 60% by 2026, from 2020 levels.
"We cannot run our fossil fuel-based infrastructures anymore the way we did," said Jan Christoph Minx, a climate researcher and a lead author on the report, at a news conference."The big message coming from here is we need to end the age of fossil fuel. And we don't only need to end it, but we need to end it very quickly."
But the report does leave room for continued fossil fuel use that utilizes carbon capture and storage — or CCS — a process in which the emissions from coal, oil and gas are captured and stored. The report's authors say this is only viable if the vast majority of emissions are captured. Some companies are developing machines that essentially act as giant vacuums, pulling carbon dioxide out of the air, but so far these technologies operate at a very small scale.
The gas has more than 80 times the warming power of CO2 in the short term, and the first installment of the IPCC report published last year found slashing methane emissions was one of the fastest ways to turn down the heat. It's this heavy reliance on coal, oil and fossil gas that is behind climate change. While individual choices and tracking your"carbon footprint" have been popular ways for people to respond to the crisis, there is a growing understanding that real change must come from reducing the availability of fossil fuels, not just the demand.
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