Source: IPCC
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDcGz1iVm6U
Date: 06/06/2014
Event: Climate Change 2014 Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change
Attribution: IPCC
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[IPCC Fifth Assessment Report - Working Group III - Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change.]
Female narrator: Despite existing mitigation policies, the growth of greenhouse gas emissions has increased, over the last decades. To limit global warming to 2 degrees, greenhouse gas emissions need to be substantially reduced in all sectors of the economy. There are multiple mitigation pathways leading to this ambitious goal.
[Video footage of a small black child at a fork in the road, looking up at signs pointing in different directions - a sign labelled "BUSINESS AS USUAL" points one way, while signs labelled "CARBON PRICING", "INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION" and "BEHAVIORAL CHANGE" together point in the opposite direction.]
Ottmar Edenhofer: The contribution of the Working Group III to the 5th Assessment, of course, was very simple. We explored the whole solution space, in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and at the same time we informed the decision-makers about the costs, about the risks and about the benefits of the pathways to which [inaudible] destabilisation levels.
Female narrator: Global greenhouse gas emissions are growing at an accelerated pace. This is largely due to combustion of fossil fuels in the energy and industry sectors. Growing economic output causes most of the increase in emissions. The other important driver is population growth, but its influence on emissions has remained roughly stable.
Karen Seto: In general, we see that before the 1970s, most of the emissions came out from industrialised countries, but since then, most of the emissions now are from what are called emerging economies or high middle-income countries.
Female narrator: Science analyzes greenhouse gas emissions from different perspectives. A growing number of studies attribute emissions from the production of goods and services to the region of consumption.
Karen Seto: For example, countries and regions that are producing products - energy-intensive products - and exporting them to other regions that are consuming them, those producing regions will produce more emissions than those that are primarily consumption regions or consumption countries.
Female narrator: Without additional mitigation efforts, global mean temperature could increase by about 4 degrees Celsius within this century.
David Victor: The world economy right now is causing massive quantities of greenhouse gas emissions, and they're going to keep on rising. To stop climate change, we need to cut them in half, globally, by mid-century, and further after that, and that's going to involve complete transformation in the energy system, especially in electric power - new kinds of power plants, bigger, longer, more complicated electric power plants.
Ottmar Edenhofer: The report shows very clearly we need a fundamental departure from the "business as usual" scenario. The policy-makers, they refer, in their policy, to the 2-degree target as a kind of a focal point, and we provided the information and the underlying requirements to achieve this 2-degree target.
Female narrator: The authors have analyzed a broad range of scenarios from the scientific literature, leading to different levels of global warming. Many of these scenarios have emission trajectories that limit future global warming to about 2 degrees Celsius. The defining difference is the beginning of emission reduction before or after 2030. If mitigation is postponed until after 2030, then necessary emission reduction rates will be about twice as high as in scenarios with immediate action. Reducing emissions means producing more low-carbon energy - doing less before 2030 means having to do much more in the following two decades.
David Victor: The analyst community is now much more aware of the complexities of designing and implementing policies, and unfortunately that's also made us much more pessimistic about the speed and ease and cost with which countries can adopt aggressive policies that will be needed.
John Broome: You can think of the atmosphere as a common resource - it's not owned by anybody, people around the world share it. They use it for various purposes, and I'm sorry to say that one is: they use it for dumping their waste greenhouse gases. It costs each individual nothing to dump her gases, and it costs nations very little to dump their own gases into the atmosphere, but the harm done by that is borne by people all over the world. That means the atmosphere gets overused, as a dump for greenhouse gas, and that is the tragedy of the common. We have to find a way of reducing that.
Ottmar Edenhofer: We need a broad portfolio of technologies, ranging from renewables, carbon capture and storage, nuclear power, energy efficiency improvements and the transformation of almost all the sectors.
Female narrator: In the long run, GHG emissions from energy supply need to go down towards zero. Advances in performance and cost have made renewable energy a fast-growing category in energy supply. Carbon dioxide capture and storage could be used to reduce emissions of fossil-fuel power plants. The technology could be important for ambitious mitigation targets, but it's not yet been demonstrated at large scale.
Ramon Pichs-Madruga: For implementing carbon capture and storage at larger scale, it's important to take into account the need to compensate the operational investment cost with, for instance, higher prices of carbon markets and also to take into account the need to consider the regulation needed to deal with the [inaudible] associated with this technology.
Female narrator: In the transport sector, the development of engines with low or no emissions, and the use of new energy sources for transport are already happening. Technical and behavioral mitigation measures, in combination with investments in new infrastructure and urban redevelopment could reduce energy demand substantially.
Karen Seto: There are significant opportunities for urban mitigation, largely because most of the cities of tomorrow have yet to be built, and so we are at this pivotal moment where, over the next 20 to 30 years, there are countries, especially in Asia and Africa, that will be developing and constructing the roads and infrastructure. Now, some of the mitigation options in the building sector are really associated with the significant improvements in building performance, increases in energy efficiency and really a reduction in building costs, such that it makes it much more financially feasible to retro-fit inefficient buildings.
Female narrator: In 2010, about a fifth of the total global emissions came from industry. To reduce total emissions, energy, materials and products would have to be used more efficiently.
Ramon Pichs-Madruga: And that is one aspect which is particularly relevant, in the case of the industrial sector, which is the role of innovation. It is important, firstly, to remove, as much as possible, the system barriers - for instance, the initial investment cost, and also informational gaps.
Female narrator: To achieve ambitious mitigation targets, policies need to be implemented across all sectors of the economy.
Youba Sokona: There is interlinkages between different sectors - cross-sectoral mitigation is much more economically efficient than sector-by-sector specific.
Female narrator: About a quarter of GHG emissions come from agriculture and forestry. Deforestation is a large source, but the related emissions have been declining in recent years. Land use is a unique sector, that offers many different options to reduce emissions, but also ways to draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Helena Chum: There are two sets of major mitigation routes. One of them is afforestation - so you plant wood, for instance, trees and the tree grows, up to a certain point it picks up a lot of carbon - that's one option. But the other measure would be to take that tree and then convert it to energy but capture all that carbon dioxide and sink it into [inaudible] storage, it's called BECCS - Bioenergy and Carbon Capture and Storage - that would provide negative emissions.
Female narrator: As emission reductions are postponed, the use of bioenergy in combination with carbon capture and storage is becoming an increasingly important mitigation option. But upscaling bioenergy production comes with risks for food security, water resources, biodiversity and livelihoods. The sooner emissions start declining, the less we'll depend on risky negative-emission technologies in the future. There can be significant risks associated with large-scale mitigation measures. But on the other side, there can be benefits beyond curbing negative climate impacts.
Youba Sokona: Let me take the case of Africa, where the energy system is not yet in place. There is two options. You can go for fossil or you can go for clean energy aspect.
Female narrator: Electrifying the African continent with clean renewable energy would have co-benefits. Reducing the use of wood and other biomass for cooking and heating could reduce pressure on local resources and also improve health, with better indoor air quality. But there are challenges.
Youba Sokona: It requires more types of investment and massive investment, in the beginning, for the initial costs of any of those different options, and unless we have those possibilities, the financial possibilities, it might be difficult to do it.
Ottmar Edenhofer: Working Group III would like to be a map-maker - wants to provide policy-relevant information without being policy-prescriptive, to give policy-makers a way to overlook the whole landscape and provide information about the past performance, and also give them information on what they could do in the future.