Deconstructing declarations of carbon neutrality

The current push for all countries to pledge to halt their net carbon emissions is both inadequate to keep global warming in check and unfair to the developing world.

T Jayaraman and Tejal Kanitkar

---

THE Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU),1 a climate policy tracker, reported at the beginning of April that 32 countries have declared their intention, in some form, of achieving carbon-neutral status around mid-century. Of these, only eight have any firm status, the rest being in the form of proposed legislation or mentions in policy documents. Nineteen among these 32 are developed countries (Annex I Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)), while the rest are less-developed and emerging economies. The target year for most of them is 2050, while a few have declared that they would achieve this goal earlier. China has indicated its intent to reach this status by the year 2060. Even for carbon neutrality declarations so far into the future, only 24 of these countries have a published plan for reaching net-zero emissions.

However, over the last several months, the UN Secretary-General has taken the lead in sparking off an international chorus, led by global civil society organisations based in the developed countries and tacitly encouraged by their governments, that is urging all countries, including developing countries, to make such declarations.

Paris Agreement goals

The impetus for such declarations arises from Article 4.1 of the Paris Agreement which states that ‘In order to achieve the long-term temperature goal set out in Article 2, Parties aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognising that peaking will take longer for developing country Parties, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century, on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.’

The temperature goal of Article 2, the much better-known declaration of intent of the Paris Agreement, declares the aim to be: ‘Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change’.

It is evident that the balance of emissions and removals of greenhouse gases is not sought, under the Agreement, on a country-wise basis but for the world as a whole. Both developed-country governments and international civil society outfits routinely misstate or misinterpret this as an individual commitment by all countries, applicable to their domestic emissions. The text of the Paris Agreement of course clearly indicates that this is indeed a global goal, based on considerations of equity and differentiation between the roles of developed and developing countries that are inbuilt into the agreement.

However, there are two related and more critical issues that are largely ignored. The first is the compatibility of the intent of Article 4.1 and Article 2: Is the achievement of carbon neutrality compatible with achieving the 1.5°C or 2°C goal? And, importantly, are the mid-century carbon neutrality goals of developed countries compatible with Article 2.2 which declares that the Paris Agreement ‘will be implemented to reflect equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances’? 

Pledges not compatible with remaining global carbon budget

The hard scientific reality is that such a three-way compatibility between temperature goals, carbon neutrality and equity not only is not guaranteed, but cannot be achieved for the 1.5°C temperature goal at all. And even for the 2°C goal, the current pledges are highly inadequate. In the light of this, current declarations of neutrality must be seen as yet another instance in the long record of prevarication by developed countries, postponing immediate and effective climate action with new slogans and ever-shifting goalposts.

This harsh conclusion follows from straightforward scientific considerations, accessible to all, based on the notion of the global carbon budget. Since the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is accepted that limiting global temperature rise is best understood as imposing limits on global cumulative greenhouse gas emissions from the pre-industrial era to the time when net emissions cease, namely reaching global carbon neutrality.

This finite quantum of global cumulative emissions, fixed according to the corresponding temperature goal (up to probabilistic uncertainty), is referred to as the global carbon budget. Thus, if carbon neutrality is independently posited as being reached in 2050, this will be compatible with the desired temperature goal only if the cumulative emissions till that time remain within the corresponding carbon budget. Hence the date of carbon neutrality, and the temperature goal with its associated global carbon budget, are two independent parameters that determine the future.

According to the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C warming (SR1.5), a credible estimate of the remaining carbon budget from 2018 onwards is 480 gigatonnes (billion tonnes or Gt for short) of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2eq), for a 50% probability of restricting temperature rise to less than 1.5°C. At the current rate of emissions of about 42 GtCO2 per year (the uncertainty being about 3 GtCO2 either way), this budget would be consumed by default in 12 years. If global emissions start declining immediately by a fixed annual quantum and reach net zero by 2050, it would result in global cumulative emissions of 764 GtCO2 between now and 2050, implying a greater than 70% probability of exceeding 1.5°C warming. If the remaining carbon budget of 480 Gt is to be adhered to, then with a steady linear decline in emissions, global carbon neutrality must be reached by 2039.

For a 50% probability of restricting temperature rise below 2°C, the budget is of course more generous, amounting to about 1,400 GtCO2eq. This provides considerably greater room for manoeuvre. This budget would be exhausted by around 2050 at the current rate of emissions and by around 2078 with constant emissions reduction every year. However, if global emissions continue to grow for some more time and peak sometime beyond 2030, net zero emissions would have to be reached much before, even for the 2°C target.

Annex I Party emissions

The hollowness of many carbon neutrality declarations is brought out more starkly when we consider individual declarations in more detail.

Greenhouse gas emissions in the United States (without considering land use, land use change and forest (LULUCF)-related emissions) peaked in 2005 and declined at an average rate of 1.1% from then till 2017, with a maximum annual reduction of 6.3% in 2009, at the height of a recession. If the US reaches net-zero emissions by 2050 by reducing a fixed quantum of emissions every year, starting immediately, its cumulative emissions between 2018 and 2050 would be 106 GtCO2, which is 22% of the total remaining carbon budget for the entire world. Hence, US cumulative emissions by 2050 would be so high that unless others reduced emissions at even faster rates, the world would most certainly cross 1.5°C warming.

In fact, if the US is to stay within its fair share of the remaining carbon budget, it will have to reach net zero emissions by 2025. Even by such a reckoning, the US would still owe a carbon debt of 470 GtCO2 to the rest of the world for having used more than its fair share of carbon space in the past. At a very moderate carbon price of $30 per tonne of CO2, this means a carbon debt of over $14 trillion that the US owes the world.

Similarly, the European Union, to keep to its fair share of the remaining carbon budget, would have to reach net zero by 2033, with a constant annual reduction in emissions. Individual countries will have different dates for a fair net zero – Germany’s is 2030. If the EU reaches net zero only by 2050, it would consume at least 71 GtCO2, well above its fair share. Either way, the EU owes the world a carbon debt of about $9.3 trillion (at the same price of $30/tonne of CO2) for past emissions.

Table 1 shows the years in which net-zero emissions must be reached for some countries to keep within the fair share of the remaining carbon budget, assuming linear reductions. It also shows the carbon debt owed to the world for past emissions (at $30/tonne of CO2).

Just the 11 countries shown in the table (excluding the EU) owe the world a carbon debt of $26 trillion, even at a moderate carbon price of $30 per tonne of CO2. And yet, the current contributions of developed countries, even in the form of low-cost loans, are many orders of magnitude lower than this.

Given their past emissions, developed countries should in fact consume none of the remaining carbon budget. Theoretically, they should stop emitting immediately and start removing CO2 from the atmosphere, so that at least the remaining carbon budget is available to developing countries. However, while such a demand makes an important political point, this is physically unfeasible, though of course the developed countries are nowhere near acknowledging this responsibility. They will therefore consume a part of even the remaining carbon budget.

As the extent to which higher levels of development, well-being and income are achievable through non-fossil-fuel-based development remains unclear, a minimum requirement for the future is that rich countries stay within a fair share of the remaining carbon budget. This is essential to the future of developing countries. However, as is clear, pledges to achieve net zero by 2050 by these countries violate even this basic minimum requirement.

Regrettably, an influential section of the climate policy modelling literature has promoted the illusion that the three-way compatibility between temperature goals, carbon neutrality and equity is feasible through large-scale recourse to speculative ‘negative emissions’, ostensibly through widespread expansion of carbon capture by the biosphere. They are also promoting the illusion that not resorting to any serious increase in emissions at all is indeed the means to guarantee the successful development of the Third World.

Developing countries clearly should not and cannot join this game of carbon neutrality declarations. The least developed countries (LDCs) are owed a carbon debt of over $7 trillion by developed countries (at the same price of $30/tonne of CO2). For the future, even if the developed countries stay within their fair share, what remains (as a fair share) for the LDCs is about 64 GtCO2eq, for a 50% probability of limiting temperature below 1.5°C. This is almost the same amount as the LDCs have emitted in the past. There is no evidence to support the assertion that the LDCs will be able to achieve higher levels of development with such a severe constraint on their emissions.

Large emerging economies too find themselves in a similar situation. India does not owe a carbon debt to the world. India’s cumulative emissions (non-LULUCF) are no more than 3% of global cumulative emissions prior to 1990 and about 4.5% since till 2018. Nor are India’s current annual emissions such as to seriously dent the emissions gap between what the world needs and the current level of mitigation effort, even as India’s mitigation efforts are quite compatible with a 2°C target.

The twin burden of low-carbon development and adaptation to climate impacts is onerous, especially for less developed economies, and no doubt requires serious, concerted action. But the current push for net-zero declarations from all is a pseudo-scientific discourse, based, in the final analysis, on empty and inadequate promises by the rich – an attempt yet again, for the umpteenth time since the climate convention was signed, to postpone serious and immediate mitigation.                         

T Jayaraman is with the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, India. Tejal Kanitkar is with the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru, India.

   This is an expanded version of an article published in The Hindu on 8 April 2021.

Notes

1.       ECIU website

*Third World Resurgence No. 347, 2021, pp 11-13