Science has provided the tools but they need to be used effectively, authors say
Australian authors of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report have said that science and research have provided the tools needed to meet emissions targets.
The report—Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change—was released on 4 April.
Tommy Wiedmann, a University of New South Wales sustainability researcher and a lead author on the “emissions trends and drivers” chapter, said that meeting targets would require “fundamental structural changes at a global scale”. Stubborn areas include sales of SUV vehicles, aviation and a sharp increase in demand for energy to cool buildings.
The cost of renewable energy has “dropped dramatically” over the past 10 years and the percentage of energy produced by renewables is growing, but that is being neutralised by both population and economic growth, he said. “This is the good news and the encouraging news, but still the change is not coming fast enough.”
Globally, the cost of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power have dropped by up to 85 per cent, and deforestation rates have slowed.
The IPCC says that land use emissions reductions and carbon storage can contribute to meeting targets but “cannot compensate for delayed emissions reductions in other sectors”.
Enormous opportunities
Frank Jotzo, director of the climate and energy policy centre at the Australian National University, worked on the chapter about government and institutional policies on climate change. He said the report offered “enormous opportunities to cut emissions in the short term” at relatively low costs.
“Australia has plenty of opportunity right across the spectrum…That includes the potential for Australia to be an exporter of zero-carbon technologies.”
But it is not just a matter for government policy, he said. “Non-governmental organisations, business and the research sector all need to be involved…What’s needed is technology, taxes, regulation and everything else.”
Making a difference
Peter Newman, a professor of sustainability at Curtin University, worked on the transport chapter of the report. He is leaving the IPCC panels after 10 years and said that this and previous reports, written on a largely voluntary basis by scientists, had “begun to make a difference”.
“It is an extraordinary thing to see how 7,000 scientists around the world pull this thing together,” he said.
Newman added that the Australian mood was changing, not only because of the extreme events of recent years but because “there was a sense that solutions are now economically attractive…that we in fact now can be a leader globally”.
He said Australia’s challenges included shipping, aviation and the high energy losses involved in hydrogen-based solutions. Western Australia stands to benefit as it has up to half of the available reserves of lithium, which is used for many batteries, he added.