Scientists working on how to limit global warming to 1.5C have urged coal-reliant countries to phase out the fuel faster than developed countries ever did.
A study in the journal Nature shows that countries like China, India, and South Africa will abandon coal more quickly than any other nation has ever done.
However, these models call for far slower decreases in oil and gas consumption—fuels that are often produced and consumed more heavily in developed nations.
Greg Muttitt, the study’s principal author, said that these models are supported by the scientific reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and that they direct international policymakers.
In his words, “The models currently are asking so much more of India and South Africa than they are of Canada and France and that’s a problem.”
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Academics create integrated assessment models to determine how to keep global warming to 1.5C. (Iams). They simulate variables like the amount of forest that needs to be preserved, the speed at which electric vehicles must be adopted, and the rate at which the use of various fossil fuels must decline using formulas and spreadsheets.
According to Muttitt, who collaborated on the study with modellers from University College London, estimates frequently include subliminal biases because they are rooted in wealthy countries.
Last year, the IPCC published a report based on the models, concluding that to limit global warming to 1.5C coal use should fall by nearly three-quarters between 2020 and 2030 while oil and gas use goes down by around a tenth.
The modelled transition away from coal is even faster in the power system. The IPCC says coal use for electricity should fall 88% between 2020 and 2030.
Muttitt’s study compared this scenario with previous rapid energy transitions like South Korea’s move away from oil after the 1973 Opec crisis and the USA’s transition away from coal during its 2010s boom in home-grown fracked gas, but the results were not realistic.
He discovered that coal-dependent countries like China, India, and South Africa would need to transition away from fossil fuels twice as quickly as the previous global records, proportional to the scale of their energy systems, in order to achieve an 88% fall.
According to the report, this raises concerns regarding socio-political viability, adding that 2030 for wealthy nations and 2050 for underdeveloped nations are better targets for the phase-out of coal since they are ” “difficult but possible”.
Story was adapted from Climate Home News.
