At the heart of attempts to halt damaging climate change is a pair of ideas: decarbonise electricity and electrify the economy. So, how is it going? Badly is the answer.
The explanation for this explosive rise in electricity generation is the desire of people and businesses in emerging and developing countries to enjoy the energy-intensive lifestyles of high-income countries. Since the latter have no intention of giving these up, how can they complain? Yes, there exists a politically irrelevant “de-growth” movement. But halting growth, even if it were politically acceptable , would not eliminate demand for electricity.
The study also asserts that the costs of mitigating this, by limiting the temperature increase to 2C, are just a sixth of the costs of the likely climate change. It adds that the largest losses will be inflicted on poorer countries in “lower latitudes” , who are not responsible for the trap in which they find themselves.
Until recently I still hoped we could be lucky: market forces might drive the world towards renewables fast enough. This no longer seems plausible because the pace of the switch to renewables needs to be vastly accelerated .