Latest / Saving the World From Bad Ideas / Bad Idea #37 "1.5 degrees" with Kwesi Quagraine and Erle Ellis

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Bad Idea #37 "1.5 degrees" with Kwesi Quagraine and Erle Ellis · Saving the World From Bad Ideas

0:00
We've said it's really bad news if we go past 1.5.
0:04
Welcome to the post 1.5 world. The central narrative challenge
0:08
that we've got here is that the world is crossing 1.5, and So
0:11
what do you do when you've organized your whole climate
0:14
policy and all of the countries have been arguing over how to
0:17
deliver 1.5 and 1.5 is now potentially in the rearview
0:21
para. If you use the IPCC definition
0:23
then we're only going to find out that we've reached 1.5 after
0:26
20 years, so that has been a shortfall with 1.5°.
0:32
Welcome to Saving the world from bad ideas.
0:34
I'm Mark Linus, and I've had a few bad ideas in my time.
0:38
I used to go out in the night time to destroy GMO crops, and I
0:41
also opposed nuclear power. But then when I looked at the
0:43
science, I found I got it wrong. Oops.
0:46
I've learned the hard way that none of us are right all the
0:48
time. So now I'm here to challenge the
0:50
assumptions that we all too often take for granted because
0:53
the future depends on us getting it right.
0:56
So welcome to another episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas.
1:00
We've got a very special show today because we are launching a
1:04
paper in Nature. So we are leading the world's
1:08
agenda on a whole new proposal for how we measure the impact of
1:14
our actions to try to tackle climate change.
1:17
It's both simple and complicated at the same time, and I'm here
1:21
with my two co-authors who I will ask to introduce
1:24
themselves, and starting with the lead author, which is
1:28
Ukwezi. Yeah.
1:29
So my name is Chrissy Quagrin. I am originally from Ghana.
1:33
I am a climate scientist at Enkar at the moment.
1:37
I was a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Coast,
1:41
teaching and lecturing in physics and meteorology and I
1:44
preferred science. So that's a bit about me.
1:48
And of course, it's been a pleasure working with you both
1:50
on this paper. Yeah.
1:52
Yeah, over to you, Will. Hi, I'm Earl Ellis, and I'm a
1:55
professor of geography and environmental systems at the
1:59
University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
2:02
And I come to this project through some work that I've been
2:05
doing with the United Nations Development Programs Human
2:09
Development Report, which involves indicators that are
2:14
aspirational about making a better future for people on this
2:17
planet. So it's worth saying that this
2:19
show, of course, is about saving the world from bad ideas.
2:22
And what we're proposing with this new paper is a is a good
2:25
idea, but we need to respect the format.
2:28
So the bad idea that we're challenging perhaps is that the
2:33
key metric around which climate policy is organised is the
2:37
average global temperature target.
2:38
So this is probably a good place to start off our conversation
2:40
because it's why we started off with the paper and it's what we
2:44
want to, to, to potentially challenge and change.
2:47
And of course the organising principle since, well, since
2:52
even before Paris, the climate COP in 2015, which popularised
2:57
this idea of a global average temperature target of 1.5°.
3:01
And that was, you know, taken up by the vulnerable countries, the
3:04
small island states that had this slogan 1.5 to stay alive.
3:08
And Earl, why did we originally decide that this wasn't such a
3:14
good idea? Yes, indeed.
3:16
This, again, has to do with the work I've been doing to look at,
3:21
you know, what kind of stories are we telling about the future
3:24
for the planet that, you know, basically so far is just talked
3:29
about as a kind of crisis. And the solution is just simply
3:34
to avoid the crisis rather than the kinds of narratives we tell
3:38
when we're trying to get cooperation going at larger
3:42
scales internationally to achieve something together.
3:46
And so these kind of aspirational narratives like
3:48
let's eliminate smallpox, we can do this.
3:51
We have the capabilities. If we cooperate, we can achieve
3:54
this. If we want to phase out
3:56
something like ozone depleting chemicals like the CFCS, this
4:00
involves getting together to do something to make something
4:03
better. And so that's the kind of
4:05
narrative I've been thinking about with climate for quite a
4:08
long time. And the only narratives we seem
4:10
to get are let's avoid getting the planet too hot, Let's stop
4:15
burning fossil fuels, which we do have to do.
4:18
But the narrative that will really excite people in, in my
4:21
mind, as always been, what is the, what is the, the different
4:24
future that we're trying to get. And that's a future that's
4:27
that's powered by clean energy. That's ultimately where we want
4:30
to go. And so why aren't we focusing
4:32
our attention on that instead of this target that in fact we've
4:37
already exceeded, right? We've said it's really bad news
4:39
if we go past 1.5. Welcome to the post 1.5 world at
4:45
this time, right? What are what should we be
4:47
thinking about if we're trying to get people to work together
4:51
on a common project that will make this world a better place
4:55
and in particular and global climate change.
4:58
And, and so that's, that's where we got started.
5:01
Absolutely. So the the central narrative
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challenge that we've got here is that the world is crossing 1.5.
5:06
And So what do you do when you've organized your whole
5:08
climate policy and all of the countries have been arguing over
5:12
how to deliver 1.5 and 1.5 is now potentially in the rearview
5:16
mirror? The new WMO World Meteorological
5:18
Organization figures came out the beginning of January.
5:21
I think for the last three years, on average it's been
5:24
1.48. So perilously close, like just
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2/10, you know, 2 hundredths of a degree off the 1.5 level.
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There was a eight whole 18 month period.
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I think the whole of 2024 was above 1.5.
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It was 1.55. Wasn't it crazy?
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And even if we take the sort of IPCC definition of the midpoint
5:43
of the 20 year average, we're looking at that well below well
5:46
before 20-30. So crazy.
5:50
What was your take on the average temperature global
5:53
targets? And you know what we should do
5:55
with the 1.5 challenge? That's pretty interesting
5:58
because as a climate scientist, it was always hard to come back
6:01
to this. And in discussions, first of
6:04
all, temperature targets were sort of intangible in the sense
6:08
that for most people, what is the temperature target?
6:12
It's, it's about the risk and the impact that that's
6:15
especially the temperature target that is really important.
6:17
And for policy makers, they couldn't translate that into
6:21
clear actions. If you ask any policy maker what
6:24
policy did you inform from the Paris Agreement in 2015, they
6:28
could tell you that, well, we couldn't do much about it
6:31
because that measure was so intangible and we had to shift
6:37
the focus. And that's where this paper
6:38
really shines, by bringing in something tangible that policy
6:42
makers can really relate to. So from a climate science
6:45
perspective, yes, if you use the PCC definition that we're only
6:49
going to find out that we bridge 1.5 after 20 years.
6:53
And you can imagine how that will be when we've already
6:57
crossed this ratio. And after 20 years, only then
6:59
could we determine that oh, we did cross 1.5 in somewhere 2030,
7:03
that is crazy in the software driving policy.
7:06
So that has been a shortfall with 1.5° temperature target.
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So for our paper, shifting that narrative to the clean energy
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shift metric was really essential to communicate that to
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policy makers and I'm sure they would appreciate this metric
7:20
here. And we'll, we'll explain what
7:22
that is properly in in just a minute.
7:23
But just while we're still on the issue of the global average
7:27
temperature. I mean, a fall back could be if
7:29
we stayed stick with global average temperature, it could be
7:31
1.6. I mean, 1.6 to stay alive
7:34
doesn't quite rhyme. Now that does 1.7.
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The Paris goals also had two degrees.
7:39
I mean, it was, I think well below 2° in pursue efforts to
7:42
reach 1.5. I can't remember the exact
7:44
language in the in the agreement, but two degrees is
7:47
just as central. But it seems like a very long
7:49
way to fall back if you're a arguing on behalf of a
7:52
vulnerable country to say, OK, 1.5 is over, let's fall all the
7:55
way back to two degrees. I mean, what does the science
7:58
say about the difference between 1.5 and two degrees?
8:00
Is there a definite hard limit where we should say for the sake
8:03
of the ice sheets, for the sake of the coral reefs, for the sake
8:05
of the Amazon rainforest, these this is where we should stop in
8:08
terms of stopping the assuming it was even possible, but
8:11
stopping the the the rising temperature of the glow.
8:14
That's a, that's a great point is, is there actually any hard
8:17
line that divides the world between, you know, safety and
8:22
danger? That's a, that's a concept
8:24
that's kind of been used to simplify the challenges of the
8:28
way that people are changing the planet and what we should do
8:32
about it. And this idea that we now
8:34
operate in this kind of safe space within which everything's
8:38
fine as long as you don't pass some sort of planetary boundary,
8:43
that kind of model for understanding how we can
8:46
interact with the planet in a positive way is limited by one
8:50
simple fact, is that there are no such boundaries.
8:53
Scientists will only know in the very far future.
8:57
Looking back if and when we push past some of these so-called
9:02
tipping points in the Earth's system, beyond which a return to
9:06
the past. For example, you could imagine
9:09
there there may well be a tipping point for some aspect of
9:13
the Earth's system, say the Greenland ice sheet might be
9:17
committed to melting at 1.5°. Nobody knows this exact number,
9:21
and they'll only be able to determine this looking back from
9:24
the deep future. So the idea that we can simply
9:28
understand things in terms of these boundaries is a basic
9:31
problem with communicating the state of the science.
9:33
We will never know exactly where these boundaries are until it's
9:36
way too late. And 1.5 is actually a response
9:40
of policy makers to the behaviour of our societies
9:44
around the world to the two degree safety limit that was set
9:48
earlier by climate scientists who were basically at 2°.
9:52
Climate scientists cannot tell you what is going to happen.
9:55
Things get dangerous. Then in terms of it's, it's, you
10:00
know, there'll be Dragons. We don't know what happens at
10:02
2°. It's it, it starts to become
10:03
worse and worse news. At 1.5, we're still kind of in
10:06
the realm of ordinary climate behavior, ordinary climate
10:10
modeling and understanding. So the idea of 1.5 was
10:15
instituted because what happens when people think no problem
10:19
until you hit 2°, they don't do anything until you're near 2°.
10:24
And so 1.5° is kind of a safety valve, the way of kind of
10:29
producing a reaction from climate policy people before you
10:33
hit two 2°. And now that we've passed this,
10:37
the unfortunate thing is, is to make that 1.5° narrative viable,
10:42
you have to say something bad happens after 1.5°, otherwise
10:46
who cares. And so now that we're past 1.5°,
10:50
the narrative is going to shift inevitably to we are now past
10:55
the safety limit and the policy makers and governments failed to
11:00
protect us from global climate change.
11:03
And so what's going to happen next is, is not really in a
11:06
sense policy makers have lost control of their narrative as we
11:10
move into this unknown territory past the 1.5 safety mark that
11:15
they set. And So what do you do now that
11:19
can actually engage people in something that we can do
11:21
together? It's certainly not going to be
11:22
saying, oh, we're past 1.5 now we have to pull back.
11:25
Yeah, it's a pretty untenable position for a policy maker to
11:27
be in. I mean, you lost control of the
11:29
narrative, like you just said is actually a good way of putting
11:31
it because how can you set that in a top or in a climate
11:35
negotiation and say we must keep to 1.5 when you're already over
11:40
the over the level And it's in hindsight, Chris, you tell us
11:43
what you're and I know you because I know you've done a lot
11:45
of climate science work on this. What's your feeling about the
11:48
the global average temperature issue?
11:51
Yeah, I think global average temperature typically mask
11:55
regional responses and impacts, and that is what we missed as
11:59
climate scientists. For instance, the fact that we
12:02
have a global temperature average of 1.5° doesn't
12:06
necessarily mean Europe is experiencing an average
12:09
temperature of 1.5°. So the regional impact could be
12:13
higher or lower than the global impact.
12:16
And I think as Elle said with clarity, the difference between
12:21
that 1.5° and then going to two degrees is just about the
12:24
impact, the, the, the, the proportion of the impacts that
12:28
we were going to experience. And truly as a mitigating
12:31
factor, climate scientists and policymakers that time in 2015.
12:34
So that OK, why not bridge the gap by saying 1.5?
12:37
Let's act towards 1.5 because we know that the two degree
12:41
temperature target when reach or bridge is going to be very dire.
12:46
And in essence global temperature average is not an
12:49
efficient way of measuring impact at all.
12:52
And I have found that a little bit in the science even there's
12:56
this analysis that we do when we want to measure efficacy and you
13:01
find the average temperature over a great box and then you
13:04
literally divide by the global temperature to get that regional
13:08
response. But in a sense that is a little
13:11
bit flawed because you are using a measure that don't necessarily
13:15
translate to the regional impact of the region of interest.
13:18
So that was always flawed in in terms of how we're going to get
13:22
that regional responses because the regional responses are very
13:25
different. When you go to Africa, the
13:27
temperatures are probably even higher than 1.5 global mean
13:30
surface temperature over the same period, but the regional
13:33
impact will be different. I'm going to.
13:35
I'm going to add on to what what Crazy said too.
13:39
So I teach introduction to environmental science have for
13:42
years, and we talk about a lot of different environmental
13:46
challenges, water pollution, species extinctions, all these
13:49
things. And to be honest, it was always
13:51
the hardest to talk about climate change because the the
13:55
number one thing that everyone wants to talk about is how it
13:57
impacts them personally. That's the number one thing that
14:00
gets people talking. And with climate change, it was
14:03
always very vague. It's very hard to attach a
14:07
specific consequence to, you know, my classroom full of
14:11
students in a way that was really useful.
14:13
And that's probably because of this fact that right, like the
14:15
global temperature is not really affecting anyone in particular.
14:20
Like 1.51.61.7. What's the difference?
14:23
For me, it's really, really vague.
14:26
It's not something you can and it's not something you can
14:28
control. There's no like knob on the
14:31
planet where you can turn the temperature up and down and that
14:35
the policy makers need to push one way instead of the other
14:38
way. And that's the problem, right?
14:40
It's not really an actionable thing and it's not a very
14:42
tangible thing. It's not, it's not something
14:45
that we can do something about. And that makes it very difficult
14:48
to connect with the students that I was teaching.
14:50
But the same holds for everybody, I think on the
14:53
planet. It's, it's, it's less tangible
14:55
as what are we going to do? Not just, you know, what are we
14:59
worried about? What are we going to do?
15:01
And that's, I think the number one reason why this approach
15:05
gives us a lot of more possibilities and a lot more
15:09
capabilities. Yeah.
15:11
I mean, the, the expectation I think with 1.5 or 2° or whatever
15:14
it was, was that that would then kind of cascade down into the
15:19
efforts of all of the countries through their NDC's, their
15:21
nationally determined contributions, which was earning
15:23
their their own plans for their emissions going forward into the
15:28
future. And that collectively added
15:30
together would give some kind of global average temperature
15:33
outcome, which could gradually if you increased ambition be
15:36
reconciled with 1.5° or 2° or whatever.
15:39
The problem is that if you add together all of these NDC's,
15:42
these emissions plans, you're actually closer to 3° or if not
15:45
above according to most projections.
15:48
And actually, well, I want to come back and take this to you
15:50
crazy. The issue of, you know, you said
15:53
there's no thermostat. I mean, people think of maybe
15:55
carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases in total as a kind of
15:58
thermostat which controls the temperature of the planet.
16:01
But even then, it's more complicated than that because
16:03
there's other, other forcings, There's changes in the sun,
16:05
there's natural variability, there's the reflectivity of the
16:08
planet and actually crazy. That's something you've worked
16:11
on, right? I mean, the, if you want to
16:13
physically determine the temperature of the planet in in
16:15
a shorter space of time, we would do what you've been
16:19
modelling, which is solar radiation management, AKA solar
16:22
geoengineering. Yeah.
16:24
Tell us, tell us a bit about, you know, just how that would
16:26
work and why it's probably not such a good idea to do right
16:30
now. Well, my finders will not be
16:32
happy with me. Yeah.
16:33
But I mean, I think it's it's a little bit of a trick trade of
16:38
in terms of the thermostat. In fact what science even shows
16:42
is that water vapor actually is a real thermostat of the planet
16:47
as well water vapor. We tend to sort of mis
16:51
misinterpret that. And I mean, if we want to
16:54
control the temperature as we've modeled with from volcanoes and
16:59
etcetera into select engineering, that is super
17:03
perfectly doable. But what we don't know is the
17:06
regional impact of that action. We know for a fact that the
17:10
chemistry is solid in what will happen if we spray soft air
17:13
source into the stratosphere. We know it will warm up, it's
17:17
interacted the particles in the stratosphere.
17:19
We know it will reflect some portion of the sunlight back
17:21
into space. But the end goal is what happens
17:25
to the climate. Yes, we'll call the temperature.
17:27
It's easy to control the temperature, but then the
17:30
regional impact on marine water life, ecosystems, even
17:34
precipitation is very, very, very difficult to determine.
17:38
And that is one thing that we as people studying the science of
17:42
solar engineering, we never wonder advocate for solar
17:44
engineering because how, when do we start?
17:47
How long does it take? How much do we spray?
17:50
Even the particles that we now there's a going on in my lab
17:53
looking at multiple particles, different materials that we
17:58
could spray. And fun fact, Diamond seems to
18:01
be very effective. So if we be sending all our
18:03
diamonds into the stratosphere, that would be really
18:05
interesting. And the cost involved, even the
18:08
aeroplanes that we have to fly, the nozzle that has to spray
18:12
silver liners, working on something like that.
18:15
And these are all challenges and barriers that has to be broken
18:18
to be even sure to be able to do it and the sustainability of it.
18:21
How long do we do it? When do we terminate it?
18:23
What is going to happen? So I think there's a lot of
18:26
uncertainties with that. And we have to work hard to face
18:30
our fossil fuels That that that in itself is clear to everyone,
18:35
since these fossil fuel companies had even hired
18:39
scientists to do this work in the 70s and had found and
18:42
projected accurately how the world was going to warm if we go
18:46
on. And I paid it.
18:47
So yeah, it's a challenge to determine which the thermostat
18:50
is, but we have to do this inconsiderate a lot of sense to
18:54
be able to get the thermostat down in a way.
18:57
But but if you if you, if you, if you really believe that 1.5
19:01
was the life or death limit, then the greenhouse gas
19:05
emissions isn't the way to actually achieve that.
19:07
It probably would be solar geoengineering in the short
19:10
term, right? I mean, that's the, the
19:11
physically most plausible way to actually alter the planet's
19:14
energy balance on a year to year basis.
19:17
That what you're saying? Well, this is one of these
19:20
classy examples of fixing a problem with a bigger problem,
19:26
and that is something that human societies have lived on that
19:30
strategy for a very long time. It's not a new thing that to
19:34
solve one problem, we we create a bigger problem.
19:37
But I think that's a this is a classy example of that.
19:39
There's no reason that we are committed to managing the
19:44
planet's climate. The planet could take care of
19:47
its climate perfectly well without us.
19:50
And now here we are in this situation where because we can't
19:53
somehow push back on the richest people in the world who are
19:59
burning all this fossil fuel and causing this problem, because we
20:03
won't do that, because we won't eliminate this very profitable
20:06
activity, we are going to start managing the entire climate
20:11
system. I mean, that's a that's a very
20:14
poor way of addressing the challenge, which is ultimately a
20:17
social challenge of those who are causing a severe pollution
20:21
problem that is harming everyone.
20:25
Those people need to address their problem.
20:28
And of course, it's very nice just to say, OK, stop burning
20:32
fossil fuels. That's very nice thing to say.
20:35
But the reality is, is that we're almost all of us dependent
20:40
on cheap energy. Cheap energy has what is what
20:43
makes our modern lives possible. And so we're not just going to
20:48
give that up. That idea is a kind of a
20:50
fantasy. So what are we going to do to
20:52
deal with this pollution problem?
20:55
Clean energy. We have to clean up our energy
20:57
system. Most of that fossil fuel, most
20:59
of the climate change caused by burning of fossil fuels is just
21:02
about the energy system. There's other sources.
21:04
One of the things the scientists are proposing now is actually
21:07
overshoot that, which seems to me to be rather a hopeful
21:10
strategy that we can allow ourselves to just fail for 1.5,
21:13
presumably for a period of a few decades, and then, you know,
21:17
optimistically come back down below that temperature.
21:19
I mean, that might be something that happens if we ramp up clean
21:22
energy fast enough and eliminate fossils from the system fast
21:26
enough. But to have that as a strategy
21:28
and have that as an organizing principle of overshoot seems to
21:30
me to be the wrong approach. Crazy.
21:33
What do you think on that? Well, I totally agree with you.
21:36
It's like taking a gamble in itself.
21:39
Yes, we exceed 1.5° and we sort of want to say that we
21:47
temporarily exceeded and then we later bring it back.
21:51
But what is the guarantee? That has always been the
21:54
question with overshoot. What is the guarantee?
21:57
Even now we are trying to return that climate to the pre
21:59
industrial levels at least 1.5° above previous.
22:02
We've not been able to achieve that.
22:04
We failed. So why take the risk of going
22:07
into an overshoot and thinking that you'd be able to bring it
22:10
back? So I think that is the the crux
22:13
of the whole overshoot scenario here.
22:16
I'd actually like to say one more thing about this, this idea
22:19
about overshoot as well. The whole idea that the problem
22:23
that we have is we're not managing the temperature
22:26
properly and we need a group of experts to tell us exactly how
22:29
to get there. And that's the challenge that we
22:32
face is a real fantasy. The challenge that we face is
22:35
that people around the world want cheap energy and fossil
22:40
fuels are delivering most of that cheap energy and we need a
22:44
solution to that challenge. We need to find a way to build
22:48
energy systems and we already have found this way.
22:50
We need to to roll out the technology.
22:52
We have to clean up the energy system.
22:55
That is the real challenge, not the fact that the temperature is
23:00
is not being managed correctly. If we look at this as a
23:02
planetary temperature challenge alone, the real solution is the
23:06
one we just talked about. Just turn up the knob or turn
23:09
down the knob. With sulfate aerosols, you
23:11
become managers of the planet's temperature rather than people
23:16
that are trying to make their societies function as they
23:19
should, where people who are polluting the planet have to
23:23
stop what they're doing and redo.
23:25
That well, that's the perfect segue to the new proposal that
23:29
we're humbly putting in front of the world's, well, climate
23:32
community, scientists, policymakers, literally
23:35
everyone, all of you listening to this podcast instead of this
23:38
global average temperature target.
23:39
Now that we've missed it and we don't want to fall back on
23:41
something else. And it's not necessarily the
23:42
right metric to go for. So what we're proposing is to
23:45
shift the goal posts entirely and talk about a different thing
23:48
altogether, which is the rate at which clean energy is
23:52
potentially displacing fossil engine going forward.
23:55
Crazy. As lead author, do you want to
23:57
take the lead in explaining this new metric?
24:00
Well, that's thanks for giving me this onerous job.
24:04
Yeah. So I think that we, when we
24:07
started this paper, we had a very simple idea that evolved
24:11
over time and also, you know, understanding of the landscape.
24:16
For instance, we, we came to conclusion that growth rate in
24:20
clean energy minus the growth rate in total energy demand,
24:24
it's our clean energy shift. And so if we take an example of
24:28
let's say if we are growing 6% annually, clean energy grows 6%
24:32
annually, total demand grows about 3%, then the shift is what
24:37
6 -, 3, which means plus 3%. And then we said the bigger the
24:41
number, the faster we exit fossil fuels from the the
24:47
system. And I think there's been a lot
24:50
of challenges on how to even calculate the total energy
24:53
demand. I mean, the total energy has
24:55
always been a problem with how people even interpret it.
24:58
If you ask 2 energy experts, they will tell you two different
25:02
ways of calculating that. And that in itself is a
25:05
challenge because if you can estimate the total energy in
25:08
absolute terms, then it's very difficult to even ascertain what
25:12
the energy shift is. So I think our method or our
25:15
suggested metric has its own challenges, but it's a, it's a
25:19
step in the right direction, I should say, for us to be able to
25:23
achieve this. And we think that measuring this
25:26
displacement is a way of consciously acting towards get
25:31
into a clean, total clean energy system.
25:35
So yeah. We should say at this point that
25:38
we're building a concept that was originally proposed by
25:40
Michael Leibroid, who is a veteran of this podcast and has
25:43
also is also hosted his own podcast called Cleaning Up,
25:46
which I highly recommend. And he put forward this concept
25:49
as a sort of illustrative part of one of his recent pieces of
25:52
writing called the Pragmatic Climate Reset.
25:55
I think it was called an amazing essay.
25:57
You should definitely go and read it, but we were building
26:01
this out in a way which is actually proposing it as a real
26:05
time metric for policy makers to focus on.
26:06
Won't we all? The place where we started was
26:08
the big picture. What does this better future
26:11
look like? And the better future looks like
26:14
a planet where we have 100% clean energy.
26:17
That's that's ultimately the target.
26:20
When can we get there? How do we get there?
26:22
That's a big challenge and it's not going to take five years.
26:26
It's going to take a generation to get there, but that's the big
26:29
picture. And so simple metric percent
26:32
clean energy, what percentage of our energy is clean?
26:36
And that seems like a very simple thing, and it should be a
26:40
very simple thing. But the reality is computing
26:44
this is actually amazingly complex because the way that we
26:50
generate the energy that we use changes at the same time that
26:56
your demand for the energy is changing.
26:59
And, and it turns out that means that it's not a simple thing to
27:02
calculate even percent clean energy.
27:05
That's the fundamental thing at the beginning of the
27:07
calculation, right, is how do you do that?
27:09
And then you can do a percent change in the rate of clean
27:12
energy. That's where we started.
27:14
That's a simple idea, right? And we should accelerate our
27:17
change in percent of clean energy.
27:19
But we had to deal with one more problem.
27:22
And this is where librix idea comes in is that if the whole
27:26
energy system is demanding more and more energy and it's meeting
27:29
that demand, not using clean energy, you can still have an
27:33
increasing percent clean energy and have more emissions of of
27:37
greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion.
27:40
And so you're not really decarbonizing.
27:42
So you have a kind of a relative improvement, but not the
27:45
absolute improvement that we need to end global climate
27:48
change. And so that that was the
27:50
challenge is, you know, how do you put all that together?
27:53
And that's this idea of the clean energy shift, which
27:55
actually puts it all together. But it but it but at the very
27:58
roots, the complexity here comes from the fact that there's
28:01
really a lot of things changing at the same time in the way that
28:04
we produce and consume energy that are changing all the time
28:07
as well. And depending on how you
28:09
calculate it, you get different numbers.
28:12
And without a global standard for those numbers, we're not
28:16
even going to be able to say what is the world's percent
28:19
clean energy. Something as simple as that,
28:21
that we need to get to 100%, we'll probably be able to prove
28:24
that. But along the way, how do we
28:26
track our progress? Very simple, basic thing that we
28:28
need to do. It's not easy to do.
28:31
Good news is, is that people like Libre, Ike and Ember and
28:34
some other groups, even the IEA are are starting to work harder
28:40
to address this challenge to come up with a global standard
28:43
measure of clean energy. And when that happens, the clean
28:47
energy shift will be easy to calculate.
28:49
But right now it remains difficult because of that lack
28:54
of standardization and the way that we measure clean energy.
28:57
Yeah, because clean energy shift as I think about it, I mean
29:01
crazy explain the maths is the rate at which clean energy is
29:05
outgrowing the total increase in energy use.
29:08
And so you can sort of think, well, that sort of logically
29:12
stands to reason that if clean energy is growing faster than
29:15
total, sooner or later, the residual which is fossil will be
29:18
squeezed off the system right the way down to 0.
29:20
And it's the rate at which that's happening, the clean
29:23
energy shift, which is the number that needs to keep
29:26
increasing or at least to maintain a high and a high
29:29
level. And that's, so we're proposing
29:31
that could be the central focus for, for policy makers.
29:34
But as you say, if we don't for sure what the number is, because
29:38
there's different ways of, of quantifying energy use, that's
29:42
that's a problem. And so part of the point of this
29:44
paper actually is to set the research agenda, or at least to
29:47
advance the research agenda to the extent that we can settle on
29:52
some, some more substantive numbers, which actually make
29:55
this metric more solid. And part of the problem we've
29:57
got is, I mean, Michael's lately where I can explain this in his
30:00
own podcast as well, is the issue of primary energy versus
30:03
useful energy, let's say. Because I mean, the, the, the
30:07
problem is that a lot of the prime energy, which is like
30:10
lumps of coal and you know, litres of petrol is wasted by
30:15
the sheer loss of thermodynamics.
30:17
That generating into heat and then generating into electricity
30:20
or generating the heat and an internal combustion engine and
30:22
then moving the car, 70% of that energy is actually wasted.
30:26
Whereas if you electrify that you electrify power.
30:28
So the electrons are coming from a photovoltaic panel and going
30:31
to, you know, a light bulb or going into an electric car and
30:35
you know, there's a lot less energy wastage.
30:38
So the the electrification process of the whole energy
30:41
system makes it dramatically more efficient during the
30:44
century. So as you decarbonize, you
30:46
actually need to produce a lot less primary energy.
30:48
So if you're trying to replace the total amount of primary
30:50
energy we're using today, you're actually probably seeking to
30:53
achieve the wrong thing and then making it appear much harder
30:55
than it might actually be. It's like the goal post is
30:58
shifting as you're going toward it, and that obviously makes it
31:02
very complicated to have a simple measure of how you're
31:05
doing. Are you getting closer?
31:07
How fast are you getting closer? That's basically what we're
31:09
talking about. But right now it's really not
31:12
possible to calculate that accurately and needs to become
31:15
possible because really this is the number that we should be
31:18
focusing on when we're talking about are we making progress to
31:20
a safe climate or not? And you know, without this
31:24
ability, we're kind of flying blind here.
31:27
And, and, and so that's ultimately I think what we hope
31:30
to accomplish with this is to call on the experts who produce
31:35
these numbers to produce these numbers in a form that we can
31:39
all agree on and that can be used to measure progress and
31:42
even set progress goals toward this safer climate future where
31:47
we have 100% clean energy. Yeah, I mean, crazy.
31:49
You were, you were in charge of running the numbers and you it
31:52
it kept us up late tonight. I think we it would be safe to
31:56
say. Yeah, we spent a lot of late
31:59
nights on this day, Yeah. Memorable ones, yeah.
32:04
Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think that
32:07
that's literally the challenge. As I said, even defining these
32:12
terms was a little bit of a challenge.
32:14
Someone would say, oh, you should add fossils and you
32:19
should do it this way. And then even estimating primary
32:22
energy, you could see and but that's a differently, that's a
32:26
differently. There are different assumptions
32:27
on how the substitution is done. And as L certainly said, we need
32:32
to standardize these things. We should have a way of saying
32:35
this is how it's done and this is how we expect it to be done.
32:39
And until then, we'll keep on running around chasing our tails
32:44
because that will not get us to where or how actionable we want
32:48
things to be. We want the policy maker to be
32:50
able to say, oh, OK, I can track these numbers.
32:52
These are standardized way of tracking these numbers.
32:55
A policy maker in Africa should be able to track the numbers.
32:58
A policy maker in the US, in Europe should all be able to
33:00
track the numbers and they should arrive at the same
33:02
answer. And that is really going to be
33:06
important going forward. And this even gives this this
33:10
ability and this again, happens because of things that we've
33:13
learned from other types of indicators of progress like this
33:16
is that people can get competitive.
33:18
You can see like this country's doing really well.
33:21
Why can't we do as well as them? What are they doing that is
33:24
getting them to clean 100% clean so fast or getting their clean
33:28
energy shift up so high? What are they doing so we can
33:31
learn from each other? And honestly, that form of
33:34
competition, you know, look at what the US is doing.
33:36
They are so far behind the progress curve.
33:39
We're all up here high on the clean energy shift and and this
33:42
country is lagging behind. I mean, this kind of of
33:45
international process is actually pretty powerful.
33:48
You don't want to necessarily be looking like the worst country
33:51
in the world for something, although, you know, it does
33:53
depend on the politics of that country still.
33:56
But it, it, it gives a if for anything that you use in the
33:59
international realm, like international climate policy,
34:02
having a kind of a number that defines progress that everyone
34:06
can see every year is really a very useful, not just a measure
34:11
of progress, but also promotes effort.
34:13
There's a, there's a kind of a payback for being better at, at,
34:17
you know, elevating your CES. Absolutely, because because
34:20
progress is defined upwards and I think that narrative reframing
34:24
is actually really critical. Whereas net 0 is about stopping
34:28
doing something and getting to 0 and eliminating it.
34:30
And, and actually what politicians want to do is to
34:32
deliver growth and prosperity and energy abundance.
34:35
And actually the clean energy shift I think works strongly
34:39
with that narrative because you're the race is upwards
34:41
towards 100 and you've got to grow clean energy as fast as
34:44
possible, which means investment.
34:45
It means more solar, more wind or nuclear, more geothermal.
34:49
All of the clean energy technologies have to be upscaled
34:52
as dramatically as possible. And, and that's an exciting
34:55
thing to do, which involves innovation and prosperity and
34:58
all. So I actually think the
34:59
narrative reframing here is actually quite critical.
35:01
And there's a reason really why it could be more attractive to
35:04
policy makers as a metric. Yeah, I agree.
35:09
Good. Do you want to expand on that
35:11
quasi? No, I think you've said enough.
35:14
And I mean, we, we just have to let policymakers know that it's
35:20
not all doom and gloom. We still can do this in a way
35:23
that is sensible. As I will say, it should be
35:27
sensible enough. Well, the reality is right.
35:30
Is, is that US global change scientists or?
35:34
I'm a global change scientist, I mostly study ecology, but you
35:37
know, we're very tuned into what's going on with global
35:40
change on the planet. We're kind of behind the curve
35:44
in understanding what's going on with popular efforts, popular
35:48
understanding of what's going on on this planet and the idea that
35:52
it's all about doom and gloom climate change and not about one
35:56
of the most exciting transitions in human history.
35:59
The transition to clean energy is, is really what's driving so
36:03
much of the economies around the world.
36:06
Politically, it's much more exciting.
36:08
It it, it's something that people can get on board with
36:11
rather than just kind of repeat after me.
36:14
We're doomed because we're past 1.5.
36:17
Instead of that kind of model, we're talking about what can we
36:20
actually do to end global climate change?
36:23
This is what will do it. And it's something that people
36:26
want, like, people actually like clean energy.
36:29
Anybody who's have an electric car will tell you electric cars
36:32
are awesome. Electrified societies are
36:35
better. Some countries have grasses.
36:38
In fact, the places where you see this growing in some of the
36:40
most rapidly is places like China and India where they are
36:45
on board with this. There's no reason to build all
36:47
that dirty energy infrastructure because the clean stuff is both
36:51
better and cheaper now. And so we really are seeing this
36:55
transition that, you know, watching from the outside, just
36:58
thinking about global change, we're not really so aware of
37:02
necessarily in our kind of ivory towers.
37:04
But out there in the real world, this is happening.
37:06
And quite absolutely thanks to thanks self crisis happening in
37:11
Africa too. Do you think this is as relevant
37:12
in in sub-Saharan Africa as it might be in China or elsewhere?
37:15
That's it. That's a great point.
37:17
So in Africa, I think it's slow in the sense that government
37:22
don't subsidized some of these things.
37:24
For instance, if I want to get a full vote itself for my home, I
37:29
would have to pay top dollar for it.
37:31
Whereas government could put an incentives like, OK, crazy, if
37:34
you go this way, I'm going to give maybe 30% discount on even
37:38
the import duties. And then when you come in and
37:40
then you give to the grade or you give somebody some power,
37:44
you do it to the grade. Then there are some subsidies.
37:46
That is not happening in Africa. So that is a little bit slow,
37:49
but I think that is going to catch up because we have a
37:52
younger generation who want everything clean.
37:55
Interestingly, they want everything clean.
37:57
They're eating well, they're exercising, they're putting all
37:59
the hard work. And so it is so easy for those
38:02
people to say, hey, I want to go green and then get an electric
38:06
car. And I think that that is going
38:08
to happen. It's going to catch up, but it's
38:09
it's a little bit slow to say. I mean, we, we talked to Amber a
38:13
bit when we were running the numbers on this and they were
38:16
very helpful in, in writing this paper.
38:18
If you trust their numbers, solar plus batteries in, in
38:22
sunny countries. So most of the tropics and most
38:24
of the developing world, frankly, is now the cheapest
38:27
option, cheaper than fossil, cheaper than any of the
38:29
competitors. And so actually the, the
38:32
incentive for any government is to reduce import duties on
38:35
Chinese, cheap Chinese solar panels to 0 and get that energy
38:38
installed as rapidly as possible.
38:39
And it really is taking off in, in, in, in lots of countries.
38:43
It's, it's huge now in Pakistan. It's, it's, it's also
38:47
increasingly dealing with the fact that the grid isn't even
38:49
reliable in, in many African countries that, you know, you've
38:54
got long blackouts and people have got diesel generators.
38:57
And so actually the solar revolution, I think is going to
38:59
completely transform this picture much more rapidly than
39:02
people perhaps appreciate. And actually the again, this is
39:05
embers. Embers analysis shows that if
39:09
you look at just the electricity system, clean actually did
39:12
outgrow total demand just last year.
39:14
So it's not it's not the whole energy system because you've got
39:16
you know, you've got transport and you've got the other sectors
39:19
to think about. But just looking at power
39:20
production, electricity clean, it's already outgrowing,
39:24
outgrowing total and you're, so you're already seeing a peak in
39:27
power sector or electricity generation emissions largely
39:31
driven by China, which is a really, really an incredible
39:34
story. So the fact that we're proposing
39:37
this metric, which goes with this, this enormous exciting
39:40
transition which is already well underway, I think you know, goes
39:43
with the momentum of of current events.
39:45
Hopefully as long as you can ignore the the United States
39:47
which is doing its best to to re fossilize and bring down.
39:52
How much Some countries can be on the wrong side of history.
39:56
But this is not just a political movement here.
39:58
This is obviously something that is driven partly just by what
40:03
people want and what people can afford.
40:05
What's what's the best technology to make your energy
40:08
in terms of cost, stuff like that is it's hard to beat that.
40:12
That's kind of way it's a history changing kind of
40:15
transition that's already going on.
40:16
It's already well underway. It's not going to go back.
40:19
I think what the criticisms might be on people's concerns
40:22
about this. I think a lot of people who have
40:24
spent a lot of time on trying to work out what the temperature
40:27
implications are of certain emissions scenarios and and so
40:31
on. I think they're going to look at
40:32
this paper and say, well, what's the temperature outcome of the,
40:35
of the pathway you're proposing for this clean energy shift?
40:38
I mean, we decided not to run any future numbers because we,
40:41
we just didn't have the, the data to really base a useful
40:45
projection on. But does that mean we've got
40:47
nothing to say about the future temperature or, you know, or are
40:51
we still seeking an outcome here, which which makes sense to
40:55
the kind of climate community? Oh, what's your take on this?
40:59
I know you'll have a. Well, you know, for the last I
41:03
don't know really. Since I finished my PhD in 1990,
41:07
there's been this increasing interest in, you know, making
41:11
the science of climate change. Understanding how the whole
41:14
Earth system functions and produces climate has been a huge
41:18
emphasis. It's a whole industry.
41:20
And people have built their whole careers on trying to
41:23
understand, for example, you know, what happens to CO2 in the
41:27
trees of the world and how that will affect temperature and all
41:30
these kinds of complexities. And from this kind of community,
41:33
you get solutions that are oriented toward their science.
41:36
For example, you could argue that if we just planted enough
41:40
trees, we could solve global climate change.
41:43
And, you know, if we had another planet worth of land to work
41:47
with, not just the limited land we actually have, maybe that's a
41:50
reasonable idea. But the truth is, is that
41:52
industrial burning of fossil carbon is much bigger than what
41:59
the biosphere can do. And that's why we're basically
42:02
overwhelming the climate system. And it is shifting.
42:06
And for that reason, the whole idea that we're just going to
42:08
chip away at what's going on with the industrial world,
42:12
burning all this fossil fuel by kind of turning a little lever
42:15
on trees and a little lever on soils and doing a little bit
42:18
here and there. This kind of chipping away
42:20
approach and this we have to manage the entire carbon budget
42:24
for the planet. That's how we're going to solve
42:26
this problem is both are kind of hubris.
42:29
Like we are we really serious? Like do we really understand
42:33
well enough to like turn all these knobs and get it working
42:36
when we can't even manage something like what people are
42:40
doing themselves, which is got no natural analog, right?
42:43
We're burning fossil fuels in all these factories.
42:46
The idea that somehow that's too complicated.
42:49
We don't we won't just focus on that.
42:51
We'll focus on everything at once.
42:54
That's a, that's a problem in itself.
42:57
We need to focus on what people can do to end this problem.
43:00
And, and the fortunate thing is, is that almost like 90% of this
43:03
problem is basically burning fossil fuels, which is something
43:07
that we have a solution to burning fossil fuels.
43:10
Now there's some hard to do things like flying airplanes
43:13
with, without jet fuel is not something we have solved very
43:17
well. And maybe that will be one of
43:20
the last things we solve, but making electricity has been
43:24
solved. There are much cleaner ways to
43:26
make electricity, many different kinds of ways.
43:30
And we, there's ways of powering vehicles that don't require
43:33
burning petroleum. There's so many solutions that
43:36
we actually already have. And the cool thing is the
43:39
marketplace has already recognized, wow, this is
43:42
actually pretty profitable and is, and is, is also moving in
43:45
that direction. So it's, it's, it's kind of like
43:48
this is where societies are headed.
43:50
They're toward this better, cleaner future.
43:53
And it's time to kind of get this, the climate community back
43:56
to reality. We are not managing the whole
43:59
planet. We're never going to manage all
44:01
the planet in detail. Let's focus on solving this
44:04
challenge of fossil fuel combustion at its root, which is
44:08
we have to go to 100% clean energy economies.
44:13
And as you said, all you looked around this and the carbon
44:19
dioxide problem is 90% of that is fossil fuels.
44:23
It's not coming from, you know, all of these other, all these
44:25
other places. And I guess people might also
44:27
object, well, why aren't you dealing with agriculture and the
44:30
food system and methane and nitros oxide?
44:32
And I think we're arguing actually just back off a bit.
44:36
And these are specific problems that need to be dealt with in
44:39
specific ways. And so taking a more, I think we
44:42
call it a sectoral approach is actually a bet, you know,
44:46
because if you complicate all this stuff together, when you
44:48
have this basket of CO2 E and you have all of these, all of
44:51
these different gases and you have to work out their global
44:54
warming potentials and somehow they're interchangeable and
44:56
fungible. Actually, that's not really the
44:57
case. And I think it overcomplicates
45:00
the climate system or the climate problem rather, if
45:03
you've got all the trade ability to all these different gases and
45:05
things like that, because they're all different things to,
45:07
you know, coming in different ways and affecting the climate
45:10
differently. It's actually funny, this idea
45:12
that we hear a lot, which is that 1.5° is such a wonderful
45:18
target because it's so simple, because everyone knows what
45:21
temperature is and everyone, well, of course, 1.5° doesn't
45:25
seem like much because every day, almost everywhere, it goes
45:27
up and down by more than that. But the bottom line is, is
45:30
temperature is something we understand.
45:32
And the idea is, well, global temperature then is something we
45:34
can manage. But in fact, it's not the case.
45:37
It is much too complicated to actually manage all the unless
45:40
we go to something like sulfate aerosols and cooling the planet,
45:44
which has its own dangers as we know.
45:47
So the idea that, you know, keep it simple is probably the number
45:51
one thing. You say you want to solve a
45:53
problem, the solution, keep it simple, as simple as you can
45:56
make it. That's what we're talking about
45:59
here, focusing on clean energy, the clean energy system, the
46:02
clean energy economy. This is keeping it simple.
46:06
The idea of managing everything that can produce or take up
46:11
greenhouse gases is just way beyond our pay grade.
46:16
Human societies aren't going to be able to manage all this.
46:19
We can manage our energy systems because we made them, we built
46:22
them, we're building them every day.
46:25
This actually speaks to the root cause of the issue, the fossil
46:28
issue, in the sense that we have to go to the first principles,
46:32
the root cause. It's like putting a Band-Aid on
46:35
a large 1A big one. That is not going to help
46:38
because if we really want to get a climate, a planet that is
46:43
livable, then we need to go to the root cause.
46:46
And there are so many ways to opportunities for us to advance
46:49
the science in that relation. As Errol said, we've already
46:53
looked at how we can power cars without fossils.
46:57
So definitely in the next line of action there will be other
47:00
things that we could do to sustainably move away from
47:04
fossils. And then once we tackle it from
47:06
the first principle, from the root cause, then we have a
47:09
chance, rather than managing superficially to keep the
47:13
temperature down. Because naturally, if we're able
47:15
to tackle the first principles, those other things will
47:18
naturally flow together, and then we'll have a liveable
47:21
planet. Yeah.
47:22
And there will be car benefits as well, right?
47:24
Because I don't know, half the methane that goes into the
47:26
atmosphere comes from oil and gas infrastructure.
47:28
So if that's being eliminated, then that will also address the
47:31
methane problem. Maybe the same with nitrous
47:33
oxide, some of these other greenhouse gases as well, which
47:35
are related to fossil fuel fuel use overall.
47:38
But I think the broader point remains that we're not trying to
47:42
manage the Earth system in some kind of totally complex way.
47:44
It's really just a case of dealing with this very specific
47:47
issue, which is humanity pumping a lot of carbon out of the
47:51
Earth's crust into the Earth's atmosphere and, and let's.
47:55
Be clear, it's not humanity doing this.
47:57
There are so many people in this world who cannot afford to burn
48:00
any fossil fuels at all and are not contributing to the problem
48:04
at all. They are human.
48:05
Like Africa. Like Africa, for instance.
48:07
So many Africans, so many Asians, there's plenty of people
48:10
in this world who are not contributing to global climate
48:12
change. To call it a problem of humanity
48:14
is to actually give away the reality that it is some people
48:20
doing this. It's not everybody.
48:23
No, that's really. Important, I think, is that we
48:25
have to assign responsibility for what is causing this
48:28
challenge. And it's those who are burning
48:30
fossil fuels. And of course, I'm as guilty as
48:32
anyone, but the reality is, do I want to go to the store or,
48:36
sorry, the gas station saying buy dirty energy for my car?
48:41
I don't want that. Nobody wants that.
48:43
Nobody chose that. It's just convenient.
48:46
It's convenient energy now that when you change your energy
48:50
system so that you can have, for example, an electric car, people
48:54
prefer that it's it's clean, it's not causing damage,
48:57
actually easier to use in a lot of ways.
48:58
It's got some challenges still, but those are getting worked out
49:01
quickly. So that the idea that nobody
49:03
really wants dirty energy, they just want cheap energy.
49:06
And so clean is always going to trump dirty if it's, for
49:10
example, at the same price or close.
49:14
And so that's where we're at now.
49:15
That's kind of the tipping point that really matters is is are we
49:18
at that point where basically everyone can have access to to
49:22
cheap energy without destroying the climate system?
49:26
And I don't We weren't there 10 years ago.
49:28
We weren't there five years ago, maybe not even two years ago we
49:32
weren't able to say to developing countries actually
49:35
going for clean energy is your cheapest option.
49:37
That's your best option now is to avoid is to essentially.
49:40
Nobody has to tell developing countries they know what the
49:42
price of things are and they are doing you're acting accordingly.
49:46
It's pretty simple. Yeah, you can see that in the in
49:48
the figures. I mean, these countries are
49:50
leapfrogging the fossil fuels age because it's now it's now
49:53
the cheapest option to get painful energy.
49:55
And that was always the conundrum was like, you know,
49:57
yes, the developed countries and rich people in developed
50:00
countries. Of course, the the climate
50:02
problem, that's the that's where the historical responsibility
50:04
lies, as you point out. But if developing countries want
50:08
to have the same levels of development and energy abundance
50:10
and economic prosperity that we've enjoyed in the West for so
50:14
long thanks to fossil fuels, aren't they going to have to
50:16
burn fossil fuels too? And that was always the
50:17
conundrum at the heart of the climate problem.
50:19
That's basically stopped the there ever being a solution to
50:23
it until now when clean energy, if it can outgrow anti demand,
50:28
as we as we suggest it should continue to do for our clean
50:32
energy shift, that's actually pointing towards a solution to
50:36
this problem. So I'm optimistic now in a way
50:38
that I've not been for a really long time.
50:41
I mean, back in 2008 I published this book called 6° and it was
50:45
game over. It was kind of Armageddon.
50:47
It was, you know, it was dystopian future we're looking
50:51
at going even, you know, 3-4 certainly 5-6 degrees was was
50:56
absolute kind of global wipeout, mass extinction time voting for
50:59
unions. Now I think the argument is
51:01
which side of two degrees we're going to end up on and the way
51:05
that we can determine the outcome there is to get as much
51:08
clean energy built as we possibly can on a year to year
51:10
basis. And that's sort of what we're
51:12
proposing here. It's like the paradox of our
51:14
time is that we're going past this target that has been
51:18
promoted as the limits of safety, the climate system.
51:23
So that narrative is very much like that is a end of the world
51:27
kind of scenario. And and some people, some
51:29
important people have actually said things like we are passing
51:33
the ability of societies to adapt to climate change.
51:37
We're getting that far. You know, the climate is
51:39
changing that much that we're really at this kind of point of
51:42
no return and extreme danger at the same time that we've
51:46
actually developed a real solution space for this.
51:50
That is that could it's we're on the road.
51:54
We are actually finally on a clear, there's a clear path to
51:58
100% clean energy. I mean, it's, it's, it's
52:01
disturbing that we have both things going on at the same
52:04
time. At the same time.
52:05
We can have both narratives and we have, and we have to shift
52:08
that narrative. We want people to be actively
52:10
doing things for the climb, for themselves, but for the climate
52:14
system as well. We can't just keep talking about
52:16
1.5° and how hot the planet is. We need to talk about how fast
52:21
are we and can we move toward this clean energy future.
52:25
Adding to arrows that and efficiently tracking that
52:28
progress, that that is key because when people see there's
52:32
progress, they become more excited to even achieve more,
52:36
Yeah. And so, you know, with this,
52:37
this is actually quite complementary potentially with
52:40
the cop process. And so we're saying literally
52:42
when they go to Turkey or Australia or wherever the next
52:46
future cops are, policy makers could literally look at the, the
52:49
clean engine shift and say, right, it's, you know, it was at
52:52
5% and actually was at about 5.7% according to our numbers in
52:55
2024. If we hold on that number or
52:58
even get it up to 6% or get it up to 7% by, you know, 2028 or
53:02
something, I mean, that's an exciting prospect, right?
53:05
And it's also a meaningful number because we know that if
53:08
we can drive this clean energy shift upwards, we're
53:12
decarbonizing the global economy at a faster rate.
53:15
It's not the same as saying, well, you're, you know, you're
53:17
going to be at 1.8 or 2° or 2.1 or anything specific like that.
53:20
But it's actually a number, which is something that
53:23
policymakers can look at and deliver in real time.
53:26
And we're almost Speaking of real time.
53:28
We're almost at time now. But what do we, I mean, I'd like
53:32
to hear from both of you as co-authors, what do you want to
53:34
see next with this idea that we're putting out there in
53:37
nature this week? So I think that I am excited to
53:41
recalculate the CES on very using very reliable numbers.
53:46
It will be nice for us to, as a follow up, maybe together with
53:50
other colleagues to do this in the sense that it puts numbers
53:55
and reality to people and policy makers.
53:58
It helps them say that OK, this is how far we've come, this is
54:01
how far we've done before and this is, this is doable.
54:05
And that narrative will shift a lot of thinking and perception
54:09
towards, oh, we can do this wouldn't be doom and gloom.
54:12
Oh, we've already hit 1.5 by two degrees, we are all gone.
54:16
That kind of story should shift to positivity, and we can only
54:21
win this battle by positivity when the younger generation
54:25
thinks that oh, there is hope to do this, we can do this, they
54:28
can carry it on. But if they feel that oh,
54:30
there's no hope, but then they give up and then we fail in
54:33
achieving A livable planet. So that is my think.
54:37
And next is to put the numbers to the the concept that we've
54:40
proposed. And I also see the reaction from
54:43
policy makers into how they can translate that into their own
54:46
regional perspectives. Yeah.
54:48
Thanks, Crazy. Oh, what about you?
54:50
What's What's next going forward?
54:51
So for me, this was a really interesting learning process.
54:56
We started off with this very simple idea that the better
54:58
future means 100% clean energy. So how do we measure progress
55:03
toward 100% clean energy in a way that everyone in the world
55:06
could see it globally and nationally?
55:08
Simple thing it seemed. It turns out that the IEA, the
55:12
International Energy Agency, does not release data
55:15
appropriate to do this, even though they do apparently have
55:18
it. So opening that data to scholars
55:22
and countries around the world is is is fundamentally
55:25
important. We need access to the data
55:27
that's already being collected, not behind a paywall.
55:31
The second is that I would like to see a standard and IEA is the
55:36
institution that's best positioned to create a standard
55:39
for calculating things like percent clean energy and making
55:43
a long term clean energy and total energy demand predictions
55:47
that we can use. And I hope it will be used by
55:50
the IEA and Ember and other groups to produce the clean
55:53
energy shift index and make that public for every country in the
55:56
world, both going back in time and through projections into the
56:00
future about possible pathways. That's what I would like to see
56:03
as a result of of this work. Definitely.
56:06
And and just to restate the challenge, we've got to be able
56:08
to quantify in absolute numbers. So in extrajoules or terawatt
56:12
hours or whatever you want and it's got to ideally be useful
56:16
energy. So that's not lumps of coal and
56:18
it's not got all of these efficiency losses, but literally
56:20
the energy that's being used at, you know, the consumer end
56:23
really, whether it's electrons going into a chip in a data
56:27
center or lumens coming out of a light bulb or something.
56:29
But that's actually more, I mean, they like to count the top
56:33
down stuff because it's much easier to count, you know, the,
56:36
the, the crude oil going through, you know, coming out of
56:38
wells and into going into ships and going into the energy system
56:41
and, and huge amounts of coal and so on.
56:43
Then it is to actually count electrons at the point of use
56:46
in, in the whole global economy. So we understand, I think, why
56:48
that's difficult. But you do also need to, to
56:52
count the thing that really matters, which is energy doing
56:55
work, moving, you know, moving people around, lighting people's
56:57
houses, heating and so on. And in fact, that's, that
56:59
reminds me, heat pumps, you know, they harvest energy from
57:04
the environment and increase the, so you get a 300%
57:08
efficiency increase potentially with a heat pump.
57:10
So electricity actually is, is delivering 3 times more energy
57:14
through heat than you're putting in.
57:16
So that's not in prime engine numbers either.
57:18
So all of this needs to be properly counted and accounted
57:22
for. And that needs to be that data
57:24
needs to be made publicly available so that we can
57:26
actually calculate this clean energy shift in real time and
57:29
also have useful numbers to project going forward where we
57:33
can say, well, we need the CES to be, you know, 6% or 8% or 12%
57:39
or whatever the number happens to be.
57:41
If you want to totally de fossilize the world economy by
57:44
whatever point it is in the future.
57:46
And then people can start doing their, you know, big global
57:49
climate model projections and say, well, that's going to take
57:51
us to 1.8 or 2.1 or whatever it happens to be.
57:55
But I think that's, that's the way the pathway could
57:57
potentially be built in give, because people will want to know
57:59
really what how rapidly we need to decarbonize and where that's
58:03
going to, to land the planet. I mean, I think that's
58:05
reasonable, don't you? Well, I mean, you're, you're a
58:08
bit perhaps more down on the kind of global climate
58:11
modelling. I'm most concerned that the
58:14
world has a simple measure of progress toward 100% clean
58:19
energy planet. That's what we that's how we
58:23
should be thinking about what the future should be like.
58:26
And the faster we get there, the less harm we're going to do to
58:29
the climate system. And so we need, the world needs
58:33
this measure of progress. We need to know where we are on
58:36
the curve. We need to know how fast we can
58:38
go. We need to know what makes it go
58:39
faster, all these things. But it all requires a, a simple
58:42
measure that's agreed upon by every country that this is the
58:45
measure of how clean our energy system is and how much, which of
58:49
course, the opposite of it is talking about how dirty it is
58:52
and how much damage it's going to do to the rest of the of the
58:54
planet. And having an eye on which
58:56
countries are doing what. That's what will help us guide
58:59
us toward this future. And, and it has to be something
59:02
everyone can understand, even if like everyone's not going to
59:05
understand Exa jewels, but everyone can understand percent
59:08
clean. There's a lot of complexity
59:10
there. And I, and I've, I've, I have,
59:13
I've learned a lot about that complexity, but that doesn't
59:16
help in the big picture. It's up to the experts to come
59:19
up with something they can commonly agree on.
59:21
Represents the consensus on progress toward clean energy.
59:26
100% clean energy future. And then just to wrap up, I was
59:29
going to say that in addition to having the open data and
59:32
reformulating our energy definition, we actually also
59:35
need to have clean energy targets in the UNF Triple C
59:39
discussions will be really nice if it's able to penetrate that
59:43
discussions and people will see that, OK, there's an alternative
59:46
way of doing this and that would be really nice.
59:49
And of course, as we said, R&D investments are really important
59:54
to be able to transition faster and quicker into clean energy
59:57
targets, getting to 100% clean energy.
1:00:00
We need innovation and that will come by investment from
1:00:05
investors and other people thinking outside the box to be
1:00:08
really to be able to make that happen.
1:00:09
Yeah. And and just because I'm I'd
1:00:11
rather messed up this in the introduction at the beginning,
1:00:14
what what is the bad idea that we're saving the world from in
1:00:17
with this paper? In my perspective, the bad idea
1:00:20
is that a a a target, a limit to temperature change is the metric
1:00:26
that we should use to talk about getting people to cooperate to
1:00:29
end global climate change. I would argue that this was
1:00:32
always a, a, a, a relatively short sighted effort because
1:00:38
there was going to come a time even in when people came up with
1:00:41
this idea, it was, they knew that it was very unlikely that
1:00:45
we would be able to keep the planet under 1.5°.
1:00:48
So now that we're going beyond that level, the message that
1:00:51
it's sending to the world is that we have failed to address
1:00:56
dangerous climate change. And in a sense there's, you
1:00:59
know, once you failed, who's going to get on board with that
1:01:02
project? That was that, that, that was
1:01:05
not well thought out in my opinion.
1:01:07
But we now have an alternative here.
1:01:10
And this alternative wasn't likely as as possible back in
1:01:13
2015, right? Which is that we could focus our
1:01:16
attention on decarbonizing the world's economies in a way that
1:01:20
is actually already underway. We're not just forcing the world
1:01:24
to change. We're actually just trying to
1:01:26
enhance a process that's already going on.
1:01:29
It's already succeeding. And that kind of thing gets
1:01:32
people interested in participating and enhancing the
1:01:35
cooperation that we need to actually end global climate
1:01:38
change. Right, and and you're on board
1:01:40
Crazy 1.5 to stay alive, which was a odd idea.
1:01:44
It was sad. We totally, it was in, in the
1:01:46
long, oh, in, in hindsight they were, they were, I mean,
1:01:50
bringing a temporary fix in my opinion to say, hey, don't get
1:01:53
to 2°, what can we do mitigate to 1.5.
1:01:56
But in hindsight that was very wrong because nobody cares about
1:02:01
global mean temperatures. They are rather concerned about
1:02:04
the risk associated with the temperatures that they feel
1:02:07
regionally. So always, it's always impact.
1:02:09
It's always impact and it has always been impact, Yeah.
1:02:12
Well, I mean, the I wrote a book about global average mean
1:02:16
temperatures called 6° and added for each one, which I think I
1:02:20
think is defensible because each chapter outlined the impacts
1:02:24
that we thought might happen according to climate models and
1:02:27
paleoclimate and so on at each temperature.
1:02:29
So it was, it was an attempt to try to, to, to make it real and
1:02:33
to, to, to make the global average temperature thing more
1:02:37
meaningful in terms of like, it would lead to floods, it would
1:02:39
lead to this drought, it would lead to XY and Z impacts in
1:02:43
certain places at certain times. But I agree now it it seems in
1:02:46
hindsight to have been a bad idea because probably because
1:02:49
we've missed it and because it is intangible and you know,
1:02:53
nobody by definition experiences global average mean temperature.
1:02:57
So yes, let's move on and let's let's really focus on the thing
1:03:00
that is this extraordinary energy, clean energy
1:03:04
transformation which is now underway, which it wasn't until
1:03:07
very recently. So let's build on the success
1:03:10
that the world's already seeing on a year to year basis in
1:03:14
decarbonizing the economy through bringing large amounts
1:03:17
of clean energy to the world's population, especially to the
1:03:19
developing world. I want to thank, thank you both
1:03:22
Earl Ellis and crazy Craig Rain for your well Co authorship of
1:03:26
this amazing paper, which is out in nature this week.
1:03:29
And I think my e-mail is the is the corresponding address.
1:03:32
But we will all be tackling our correspondence, whether it's
1:03:36
criticisms, feedback of any sort, further conceptual
1:03:39
improvements of what we're putting forward, we'd we'd love
1:03:42
to hear it. So please do get in touch.
1:03:44
But for now, from all of us, I think it's goodbye.
1:03:51
Thanks so much for listening to Saving the World from Bad Ideas,
1:03:54
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1:03:57
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