ITS EDUCATION ASIA ARTICLE

IPCC practical report

By Danny Harrington, MD ITS Education Asia

The IPCC has released the third part (working group 3) of its current report AR6. In this section of the report we get to see the suggestions being made by the science experts on what we can actually do to stave off disaster and get back on track for the 1.5 deg target.

The IPCC identifies clean electricity and agriculture/forestry/land use as the sectors where the greatest emissions reductions can be achieved, followed by industry and transport.

Further low-emissions opportunities exist in other areas of production, buildings and the urban sector, as well as shifts in consumer demand. Overall, half the options to cut emissions by 50% cost less than US$20 a tonne. They found that:

• Coal must be phased out if the world and no new fossil fuel capability built,
• Methane emissions must be reduced by a third,
• Growing forests and preserving soils will be necessary, but tree-planting cannot work alone,
• Investment in a low-carbon world is six times lower than it needs to be,
• All sectors of the global economy, from energy and transport to buildings and food, must change dramatically and rapidly, and new technologies including hydrogen fuel and carbon capture and storage will be needed.