Current fossil fuel infrastructure does not yet commit us to 1.5 °C warming

From Nature

Abstract

Committed warming describes how much future warming can be expected from historical emissions due to inertia in the climate system. It is usually defined in terms of the level of warming above the present for an abrupt halt of emissions. Owing to socioeconomic constraints, this situation is unlikely, so we focus on the committed warming from present-day fossil fuel assets. Here we show that if carbon-intensive infrastructure is phased out at the end of its design lifetime from the end of 2018, there is a 64% chance that peak global mean temperature rise remains below 1.5 °C. Delaying mitigation until 2030 considerably reduces the likelihood that 1.5 °C would be attainable even if the rate of fossil fuel retirement was accelerated. Although the challenges laid out by the Paris Agreement are daunting, we indicate 1.5 °C remains possible and is attainable with ambitious and immediate emission reduction across all sectors.

Introduction

The Paris Agreement includes the aim to pursue efforts to limit global mean temperature rise to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels¹. How close we are to 1.5 °C depends on the choice of reference (pre-industrial) period, the methods of generating global mean temperatures from historic records² and whether the human-induced warming contribution is isolated from the naturally forced warming and internal variability^3,4.

The zero emissions commitment^4,5,6 refers to the level of further warming that will occur if emissions abruptly cease, and is related to geophysical inertia. In previous studies, the long-term zero emissions commitment ranges from around −0.4 to +0.9 °C, and is sensitive to the carbon cycle response^7,8, ocean heat uptake⁹, magnitude and pathway of historical warming¹⁰, and whether or not non-CO₂ forcing is included^10,11. When non-CO₂ forcing is included, setting emissions to zero leads to an initial rapid warming, associated with the removal of short-lived cooling aerosols, followed by a slower decline and stabilisation of temperatures driven by a reduction in the concentrations of short- and long-lived greenhouse gases⁸.

An alternative assessment of committed warming is an infrastructure commitment^12,13,14,15. This combines geophysical commitment concepts with knowledge of the possible speed at which fossil fuel-emitting infrastructure could be phased out. Under an infrastructure commitment, global society makes a serious effort to phase-out greenhouse gases but does not go as far as decommissioning power plants and other infrastructure before the end of their expected lifetimes (central estimate of 40 years for fossil fuel power plants)^12,13. Transitioning to a zero carbon energy system within 40 years will be politically and societally challenging, and opinions are divided on whether this may be technically and economically possible^{16,17,18,19,20}. We do not seek to assess the practical feasibility of this transition, but merely to report on the consequences in the context of keeping global mean temperature rise below 1.5 °C.

A third type of commitment that is often analysed is a constant forcing^21,22 or constant composition commitment, which is defined as the further warming that would result if atmospheric composition and hence radiative forcing were held fixed at today’s values. Under such a scenario, temperatures continue to increase, with the rate of warming slowing down as equilibrium is approached²². The constant forcing commitment is not directly relevant to assessing warming committed from possible real-world mitigation scenarios, as constant forcing simulations require a continually declining but finite net greenhouse gas emission and would be hard to engineer. No known emission strategy gives constant forcing. Such constant forcing simulations have led to the misconception that inertia within the ocean system means that significant future warming is inevitable⁶.

In this work, we explain that committed warming from present-day fossil fuel infrastructure is below 1.5 °C in 64% of an ensemble of scenarios with a simple climate model. These results are on the basis of fossil fuel assets starting to be retired from the end of 2018 once they reach the end of their design lifetimes, and accounts for the age distribution of extant stock. We focus on the energy generation, transport and industrial sectors which have the best data available for historical lifetimes and cover 85% of global emissions. The remaining 15% of global emissions are assumed to follow the retirement curves of the energy sector, as fewer data are available and in many cases there are cross-overs (for example, electricity supply and domestic heating). The phase out is such that the majority of CO₂ emissions have been eliminated in 40 years. As fossil fuel combustion emits short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs, which tend to result in a net negative forcing dominated by aerosol cooling) alongside CO₂, and both are gradually reduced in an infrastructure phase-out scenario, there is no sudden increase in warming from reducing emissions gradually. This is in contrast to a zero emissions commitment, where the elimination of short-lived pollutants suddenly uncovers longer-lived greenhouse gas warming.

Discussion

In this paper, we show that limiting warming to 1.5 °C is not yet geophysically impossible. Exceeding 1.5 °C occurs in only 9% of ensemble members under a zero emissions commitment if emissions cease at the end of 2018. Even if current fossil fuel infrastructure is retired at end of its lifetime and not replaced, it is possible to limit warming to 1.5 °C (bar the possibility of strongly amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks such as permafrost melt or forest dieback). Both reductions in CO₂ and other greenhouse gases are needed in order to take us close to such a temperature outcome. Aerosols exhibit a net cooling effect in the present day¹¹ but are co-emitted with greenhouse gases⁵⁹ and tropospheric ozone precursors. Although a gradual reduction of emissions from phasing-out fossil fuels does not result in a sudden warming, near-term (peak and 2050) warming commitments do depend strongly on the level of present-day aerosol forcing. End-of-century warming commitments depend on aerosol forcing, but with an important contribution from ECS and TCR.

The simple climate model used in our analysis may underestimate committed warming owing to possible future increases in climate sensitivity, as it employs a climate sensitivity that is invariant in time. Under a shifting pattern of surface warming through time⁶⁰, climate sensitivity over the historical period may have been lower than we can expect in the future as both the Eastern Pacific and Southern Ocean have not yet experienced strong warming^4,61,62. Our simple model includes the biogeochemical feedbacks of decreasing carbon sink efficiency with increasing temperature and increasing biospheric and ocean carbon uptake⁶³, but may exclude possible other biogeochemical feedbacks where the elevated temperatures might affect future Earth system processes and carbon cycle response^64,65. These feedbacks are expected to play out at timescales of decades to centuries and may thus be of limited relevance for estimating the committed warming over the 21st century. In this instance our results provide a useful first-order estimate of committed warming based on current knowledge. Our findings contrast with a recent study by Pfeiffer et al.¹⁵, which suggest that the infrastructure commitment from the energy sector alone is enough to commit us to warming above 1.5 °C. However, their analysis is based on allocating a share of the remaining carbon budget to 1.5 °C to energy sector emissions and does not discuss non-CO₂ emissions or pathways in non-energy sectors. The challenge of making emission reductions across many sectors and countries remains very high but our committed warming scenarios show two important insights. First, geophysics does not yet commit the world to a long-term warming of > 1.5 °C. Second, even when phasing out existing CO₂-emitting infrastructure at the end of its expected lifetime, warming is also kept to below 1.5 °C (or 0.4 °C warmer than today) with > 50% probability, whereas delaying action until 2030 reduces this probability to below 50%. This is important information, as it shows that whether global mean temperature increase will be kept to below 1.5 °C depends on societal choices made today and emissions reductions implemented over the coming decades.

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