Since 2015, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions should have started to decline. This was one of the conditions for limiting global warming to +1.5°C, the most ambitious objective that the 195 countries having ratified had committed to aiming for. the Paris Climate AgreementDecember 12, 2015, end point of COP21.
It is not so. “Between 2015 and 2022, global C02 emissions increased from 35.6 to 38.2 gigatons (GtCO2),” specifies Antoine Gillod, director of the“Climate Chance” Observatoryan NGO which, every year since 2018, has drawn up a global assessment of climate action since 2015.
A future no better to date?
If efforts have not been up to par since COP21, those planned for 2030 are neither. “If they were applied in their entirety, nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – the climate commitments of States – would only reduce global GHG emissions by 2% in 2030 compared to 2019”, calculated the UN this week last. We are very far from the “- 43%” that the IPCC considers necessary to reach, by this same deadline, to remain on a trajectory of + 1.5°C.
This sends bad signals less than ten days before COP28, which opens in Dubai on November 30. Yet another major international mass of climate negotiations as there has been every year since 1995. And if some of them make little mark on History, this COP28 is expected to be around the corner, particularly with regard to its agenda. In Dubai, the challenge will be to put the Paris Agreement back on track, no less. For the first time in any case, a global assessment of climate action since this Paris agreement will be presented, negotiated and recorded by the States.
Looking in the rearview mirror to better prepare for what comes next?
It’s been two years since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNCAC), which brings together the 197 countries meeting at the COP, is preparing this report. “It paints a sort of overview of where we are in terms of climate efforts on all issues [atténuation, adaptation, finances vertes] », begins Lola Vallejo, director of the Climate program atInstitute of Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI). Looking in the rearview mirror, it also provides information on the efforts that remain to be made and gives directions to Member States for their future NDCs, which they will have to present in 2025. “And these action plans will run until at least 2035 », recalls Lolla Vallejo. In other words, they will cover a crucial decade so as not to lose the climate battle. This is what makes this global assessment “simply vital”, we slip into the Climate Action Network (RAC).
But what note of hope can we cling to? If you look carefully, you will find some, by listening to Climate Chance. The association publishes this week the sixth edition of its Global Review of Climate Action, an exercise ultimately not so far from the report which will be discussed at COP28. In the ten key lessons learned by the association, some suggest the beginnings of a transition towards a low-carbon world.
Boom in green energy and electric cars, rare good news?
Among the reasons for hope, there is in particular the strong increase, throughout the world, in the production of electricity based on renewable sources. “These energies [solaire, éolien principalement] are today much more attractive than fossil ones [charbon, pétrole, gaz] », points out Antoine Gillod. And 2023 should mark a historic turning point. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts, for the first time on a global scale, that investments in renewable energies [1.700 milliards de dollars] exceed those in hydrocarbonss. “Green energy is evolving quickly, faster than many people imagine,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said in September.
The same goes for the electrification of the automobile fleet, adds Antoine Gillod: “Approximately 14% of global vehicle sales are electric, compared to 4% in 2020. In France, we are around 20%, in China around 24%, in Norway 88%. »
This dynamic is the second note of hope that Climate Chance highlights in its global report. There is a third with the slowdown in deforestation. The report notes a slight improvement since the peak of 29.6 million hectares (Mha) lost in 2016. We are now down to 25 Mha. “In certain corners of the globe, this drop in deforestation is sometimes spectacular,” adds Antoine Gillod. This is the case in Indonesia, thanks to a five-year moratorium on palm oil production, better organization of producers, but also the arrival of restrictive legislation on the consumer side, notably a recent European law prohibiting palm oil production. import into the EU of products resulting from deforestation. »
With big “buts”
Not enough to jump to the ceiling. We are only talking about a “slowdown” in deforestation, which therefore continues. And there is little hiding the significant decline in the ability of the world’s forests to sequester CO2, a key role they can play in combating climate change. And this is the case for the two other relatively good news that this observatory highlights: they are accompanied by a “but”. “14% of cars sold in the world are electric, which means that the remaining 86% are thermal,” illustrates Antoine Gillod, who also points to the rise of SUVs, including electric ones, going against the tide of the energy transition. . As for the boom in renewables, “it has above all made it possible to respond to a growing global demand for electricity,” he recalls. At the same time, fossil energy production is not weakening. We have never consumed so much coal, oil and gas. » In mid-September, the IEA still said it foresees a peak in demand for these fossil fuels in the coming years of the decade.
But there are still efforts to be made and trends to be confirmed for the IEA projection to come true. This is the whole issue of this global assessment which will be discussed at COP28: “putting the Paris agreement back on track”, urges the RAC. The federation of climate NGOs sets out a list of points that it hopes to see included in the final text which will be voted on in Dubai. Starting with “the fair, equitable and global exit from all fossil fuels by 2050”.
The release of fossils, the elephant in COP28?
This is the other big issue at COP28: will it take a concrete step towards phasing out fossils? “Probably not to the point of establishing a release date,” already estimates Antoine Gillod, recalling that the United Arab Emirates, host country, is an important hydrocarbon producing country.
Which does not prevent other progress. The senator from Loire-Atlantique Ronan Dantec, president of Climate Chance, does not only invite us to focus on the States. “Today, around 70% of the investment margins generated by oil companies go back to oil and the rest into green energies. We would have to divide this share by five or six to hope to be on a trajectory of +1.5°C,” he argues, hoping that the majors will move in this direction in Dubai.