Making net-zero possible

With a light finally appearing at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel, the world is starting to turn its attention back to an even bigger existential crisis – the climate emergency. Not that long ago, it was hard to imagine that governments, industries, and citizens worldwide would perform a rapid volte-face and start taking climate change seriously. Nonetheless, it has come to pass.

One of the pivotal moments was undoubtedly the Paris Climate Accord, signed in 2015 by 194 states and the European Union. Such a rare showing of international unity sent a powerful message to multinationals and citizens everywhere. And despite a short blip, when former US President Donald Trump withdrew his country’s support – something his successor Joe Biden reversed almost immediately upon taking office – there has been demonstrable action by governments and businesses everywhere to clean up their acts.

However, a problem as massive as climate change requires a clear, coordinated approach. In April, the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC), a London-based international think tank comprised of leaders from across the energy sector worldwide, produced two reports – one on clean electrification, the other on clean hydrogen. The reports go hand-in-hand and outline ways in which the energy transition can practically be achieved, whilst expanding the global economy, and keeping the global temperature rise to below 2°C, or ideally 1.5°C, as laid out in the Paris Accord.

Read more: UN says global climate action not enough to reach Paris Agreement goals

In a wide-ranging conversation, Industry Europe spoke to ETC co-chair, Lord Adair Turner, to find out more about the potentials and the pitfalls of the push to net-zero.

The reports were born out of a previous ETC report published in 2018 called Mission Possible, which focused on decarbonising the ‘harder to abate’ sectors of industry such as petrochemicals, cement, aviation, shipping, and steel. ETC concluded that one key technology in making the change in those sectors would be hydrogen, which itself could come from electricity. This led to the realisation that more electricity would be needed than previously thought, which ultimately led to last month’s reports.

Aimed at investors, policymakers, and private businesses, Turner described the reports’ overriding message to those groups as making them “realise that hydrogen and electricity together is not just part of the story of how we get to the zero-carbon economy, it's 80% of the story. It requires a massive scale to get there, but it's all doable. The technologies are available, but it requires a huge amount of investment and some very determined policies.”

The remaining 20%, he said, was comprised of several technologies and largely dependent on the nature of the sector, such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), and bioenergy.

“Sustainable biofuels and CCS may be crucial to decarbonise long-distance aviation. Short distance aviation will be electric or hydrogen-electric hybrid. And I can't see a way to decarbonise cement production without CCS. I think CCS may also play a role in the chemical sector.”

Lord Turner also pointed to the problem of methane emissions. While much is known about the “more measurable” issue of CO2 emissions, there is less certainty with methane in terms of how much is leaking out due to fossil fuel production.

“We should be really tightening up on the measurement and regulation of methane emissions,” he said. “We should be using satellite infrared, which can see the methane emissions and clusters. We should be regulating the fossil fuel industry very heavily.

“And to be blunt, there are good people there, but there are some people who are not so good. We can’t just trust the industry. We need to work with the good guys to help design tight measurement and regulation systems.”

He added that although the Trump administration “deliberately took the regulations backwards”, he was heartened to see the new Biden government “playing catchup fast”.

Discussing the ongoing problem of deforestation, which is increasing in places like Brazil, driven by rising demand for food and timber, he said it is a “trickier part of the story”. One potential answer could be synthetic meats.

“What can we do about [deforestation]? Will we be able to create synthetic meats? Can we persuade people to change their diets? All of which I think is more difficult and uncertain than the energy question.

Read more: Multinationals & Governments team up to end deforestation

“There is a technology called precision fermentation, and there is a case for long-term techno-optimism there. Every year, it gets 10 to 15% more efficient, unlike cows. My gut feeling is there may be a big breakthrough at some stage.”

With so many new technologies being developed at an unprecedented speed, there is cause for techno-optimism. Nonetheless, with changes happening at such a pace, there are also concerns that some sectors of society will be left behind. The obvious example of this is in the jobs market, which combines with concerns, especially amongst older workers, that retraining will not be forthcoming in their cases.

One of the major sectors which is set to be impacted heavily in this regard is auto manufacturing, as well as maintenance and repair. Electric vehicles are much easier to manufacture than combustion engines because they are less complicated to build, contain far fewer moving parts, and are not as susceptible to breaking down.

Job losses are also inevitably predicted in the fossil fuels sector. However, this Lord Turner believes can be mitigated by a jobs boom in other areas such as insulating homes, installing heat pumps and energy-efficient systems.

“There are potential negatives and potential positives. Yes, we will lose jobs in the fossil fuel sector, but at least during the process of installation of wind and solar, there's probably something like 20 million jobs created worldwide.”

This is where the government must play a role, he argues. It is down to governments to identify where the increases and the losses will be and to create opportunities for retraining.

“We have to identify the positives and negatives within the energy transition, but also realise the challenge of dealing with job losses in some areas, while job creation elsewhere is continually growing.”

To illustrate this, he points to the impact that Covid-19 has had on jobs in the bricks-and-mortar retail sector. While, according to some estimates, the pandemic will take around 750,000 jobs from traditional retail, it has created far more in warehouses and delivery.

Read more: 5 tech giants sued over use of child labour in Congolese cobalt mines

Another area, which is often seen as something of an uncomfortable reality for the green transition, is that of natural resources – in particular cobalt and lithium – which are essential for electric vehicle batteries, as well as for permanent magnets in wind turbines and for energy storage.

Around 60% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and its extraction has been linked to child labour and other human rights abuses in what is one of the world’s poorest countries.

Similarly, lithium which, while being found in more countries than cobalt including Australia and Portugal, much of the world’s reserves are in South America. The intensive process involves a lot of salt water, which often ends up as waste, damaging local ecosystems.

“There are a set of reputational and political risks [in the DRC]. It’s not a totally stable part of the world. Its ability to impose local environmental standards is much less than in other countries. And you have an informal mining sector.

“This is why there's been a lot of focus on reducing the amount of cobalt needed in batteries. The amount found in NMC batteries (nickel, manganese, cobalt batteries) has continually gone down. And it is possible to make batteries that don't require any cobalt at all. This is why, looking at the forecasts for increases in the main mineral demands over the next 10 years, people are talking about 10 times as much lithium and nickel, but only twice as much cobalt because there's been a heavy technological focus on it.

“How do we minimise the demand? With international standards. The major responsible mining companies have to make sure that they are imposing good labour and environmental standards in anything they do in the DRC. But there is also a technological response to reducing our reliance on cobalt, which we realise is trickiest because of where it's located.”

In terms of lithium, he points to the environmental damage caused by extracting the estimated 1 million tonnes per annum required when compared to the impact of mining hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal.

“If we manage it well, this will be a far, far, far cleaner system than the one that we're moving away from.”

Read more: Net-zero emissions by 2050 requires $1-2tn per year, says report

Lord Turner retains a note of cautious optimism about the mammoth task in hand. To conclude our chat, we turn to the younger generations, many of whom are angry with their parents’ generation and worried about the state of the world being bequeathed to them. Does he have a message for them?

“We should have started on this 30 years ago,” he says with an air of resignation. “If we had, we’d already be using electric vehicles. There were deniers, there was short-termism, there were vested interests. The inability of humans to respond until very late in the day. I think young people can legitimately say to the previous generation, “Thanks. You've given us a bit of a problem here. Thanks. But no thanks”.

“We need to move as fast as possible. I think we can get to net-zero by 2050. I don't think we can do it by 2030. I think it is close to impossible,” he said, adding that some countries should go faster.

The adoption of the technologies he mentioned are an important part of that, he said, along with an understanding that there is a responsibility among consumers in the developed world to “subsidise actions which put an end to deforestation and drive reforestation”.

“In the UK, for example, we have a plan to get to net-zero by 2050. But in addition, we are responsible, through our consumption, for some emissions elsewhere in the world. And our consumption emissions are higher than our production emissions. And we have been responsible for a lot of emissions in the past. And in relation to those consumption emissions and the legacy emissions, I think that is where we should step up to support the finance flows required for these actions.”

So it’s not too late?

“Look, it would’ve been better to start earlier, but we can go pretty fast now.”

- Read the ETC reports: “Making Clean Electrification Possible” and “Making the Hydrogen Economy Possible”.

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