Page 7 - AfrElec Week 20 2022

AfrElec COMMENTARY AfrElec

Fossil fuel closures needed

to stand any chance of

meeting 1.5°C target

ASIA ENDING new oil, gas, and coal developments is carbon budget,” said co-lead author, Greg Mut-
not enough to reach net zero by 2050, according titt of the International Institute for Sustainable
to new research. Instead, already built fossil fuel Development.
project must be decommissioned early if climate “Some existing fossil fuel licences and pro-
change is to be limited to 1.5°C, a new study pub- duction will need to be revoked and phased
lished this week has warned. out early. Governments need to start tackling
The study found that existing fossil fuel head-on how to do this in a fair and equitable
extraction would warm the world beyond 1.5°C, way, which will require overcoming opposition
and that in the absence of large-scale carbon cap- from fossil fuel interests.”
ture or removal, nearly 40% of developed fossil The team, led by researchers from Oil Change
fuel reserves need to stay in the ground to keep International and the International Institute for
the 1.5°C limit within reach. Sustainable Development, used a commercial
The research provides the first complete database of over 25,000 oil and gas fields and
assessment of committed or ‘locked in’ car- developed a new dataset of coal mines across
bon dioxide (CO2) emissions of existing and nine of the largest coal-producing countries.
approved fossil fuel extraction facilities. Using this data, they estimate that developed
It is the first peer-reviewed study that fields and mines could lead to cumulative emis-
expands on the International Energy Agency’s sions of 936bn CO2 if their reserves are fully
(IEA) recent finding that no new coal mines or depleted and burned. These committed emis-
oil and gas fields can be developed under a 1.5°C sions are 60% larger than the remaining carbon
warming limit. budget for 1.5°C and exhaust the remaining
“Our findings show that halting new extrac- budget for staying well below 2°C, the upper
tion projects is a necessary step, but still not bound of the Paris Agreement.
enough to stay within our rapidly dwindling The IPCC warned in April that some fossil

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