The Net Zero Myth. Why Reaching our Climate Goals is Virtually Impossible

Net Zero everyone is talking about Net Zero everywhere all at once but Net Zero what what does this even mean is it a reasonable goal how far along are we on the way and do we have any chance of reaching it that's what we'll talk about today first things first what do we mean by Net Zero until recently the term had no official definition but in 2022 the inter International standards organization blessed the word with this clarification net Zer is the condition in which human caused residual greenhouse gas emissions are balanced by human lead removals over a specified period and within specified boundaries oh God so many words okay let's look at this in detail residual means what's left after we try to reduce emissions by other means the word balance says that we remove as much as we emit this is why it's called Net Zero next Net Zero is not just about carbon dioxide emissions but concerns all greenhouse gases notably that includes methane then there's the phrase over a specified period which refers to an average over time that's because greenhouse gas concentrations rise and fall throughout the year due to natural causes such as trees taking up carbon dioxide and finally specified boundaries mean means that you can use the term Net Zero to refer to a region typically that'll be a country by the way this video comes with a quiz on quiz withth it.com even better if you subscribe to quiz with it you can collect points from all our videos and you get free access to the transcripts with links to all references it's an easy way to support both our Channel and hopefully your memory so go and check it out okay Net Zero means that we're removing as much as we're reading but why has this become a goal you might think it's because that would prevent further global warming but actually this isn't so first Net Zero means that we don't pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere but their levels can increase for other reasons for example wildfires or volcano eruptions or methane leaking from the ground or from other places because you've been eating too many beans and so on the the second important thing to know about Net Zero is that temperatures will not start to decrease once we reach it even if there are no other sources of greenhouse gases like those beans rather the temperatures are expected to stabilize at the moment our planet retains more energy than it sends back out into space and that leads to warming it'll continue to warm until it again sends out as much energy as it takes in but warming something as big as an entire planet takes a long time especially the oceans take up a lot of heat so the temperature increase lacks behind the increase in carbon dioxide levels however here's the important bit if we stop emitting new greenhouse gases and there are no other sources their levels in the atmosphere will not just remain stable they will decrease this is because they're taken up slowly by natural processes by the oceans and land it just so happens that the two Factor the slow uptake by natural sources and the lack of temperature increase coincidentally almost cancel each other out this is why climate scientists expect temperatures to stop increasing when we reach Net Zero though they'll not begin to decrease right away the third thing to know about Net Zero is that it doesn't make sense in and off itself because on its own it tells you nothing about the expected temperature increase relevant for that is is the carbon dioxide level at the time we reach Net Zero that is if we reach Net Zero with 600 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that would be very different from reaching it at 800 yet in both cases we might say hey it's Net Zero Net Zero only makes sense in combination together with a total emissions Target basically you need a requirement for the integral over the annual emissions as well as a requirement for the time by which the integral stops growing or the new annual contribution reaches well Net Zero another thing that Net Zero doesn't take into account is changes in aerosol levels Aerosoles are particles which are so small they remain Airborne for a long time like those in dust and smoke some of them reflect sunlight and reduce global warming their levels go up for example when we have a big volcano eruption or go down when coal mines are closed AOS results affect global temperatures but Net Zero doesn't say anything about them that was a long list of ifs and then why are we even talking about Net Zero because it's an easily quantifiable intermediate goal and when it comes to policymaking quantifiable gos are super important because otherwise you can't pin down anyone on what they're supposed to do okay so where are we on the way to Net Zero in brief not very far under the Paris agreement countries agreed to limit global warming to well below 2° cus above pre-industrial times and make efforts to limit it to 1.5° we are currently at 1.1 de by the way this is the global average it's only 0.9 over the sea but 1.6 Overland and Europe is warming faster than the global average it has already reached 2 . 3° at the moment we emit globally about 55 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year and as you see it just keeps going up of all greenhouse gases carbon dioxide makes up about three quarters the rest is mostly methane and nitrous oxide according to current estimates meeting the 1.5 Celsius goal with 50% probability means we have a total of roughly 400 to 800 billion tons of carbon dioxide left that we can emit so that's the integral under the curve for every trillion tons that we overshoot Global surface temperatures Rise by approximately 0.45 de C you might have noticed that these emission curves don't look like we're on the track to Net Zero it looks more like net Infinity to limit temperature rise to 1.5° we'd need emissions to Peak before 2030 and fall to Net Zero by around 2050 at the moment it looks however like we'll exhaust the 1.5° budget by 2030 according to projections from the intergovernmental panel on climate change temperatures will continue to increase until 2040 and go beyond the 1.5° limit in all realistic scenarios okay that was depressing but it's not as bad as it sounds that's because the increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the past years comes mostly from China and we better be ready for India which is likely to catch up with China soon these two countries combined have a huge impact because they account for over a third of the world's population but take a look at Europe you see that emissions have gone down significantly after peaking around 1979 and are now as low as they were around 1965 meanwhile the economy has been doing mostly okay between 1990 and 2018 the EU has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 23% while the economy grew by 61% no I don't want to talk about the German economy in the US emissions are decreasing as well though they La a bit behind Europe us emissions peaked in 2007 and are now as low as they were around 1988 even in China the carbon intensity of the economy is decreasing and the Chinese government says they want to reach Net Zero by 2060 so we've seen it's possible to decarbonize even large economies without sacrificing Prosperity still the challenge is enormous and we're not doing remotely enough a un report from 2022 concluded that current policies are woefully insufficient to meet the temperature goal of the Paris agreement they're not the only ones who have have reached this conclusion the German environmental organization German watch annually gives out a climate change performance index it takes into account greenhouse gas emissions the use of renewable energy accounts and climate policies the 2023 ranking has Denmark on top followed by Sweden and Chile the UK is in 11th position the European Union 19th Japan China and the US are around 50 at the bottom are so Saudi Arabia and Iran the authors of the report explain that the EU receives such a good ranking not because they're great in terms of doing things but because they're great in writing policies for doing things and that's although the EU policies if they became reality would not be enough to meet the terms of the Paris agreement so the situation is that we're not doing remotely enough to curb emissions and the only thing we can do to get to Net Zero is to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere the International Energy agency concluded in a report last year that at this point reaching Net Zero by 2050 is virtually impossible without carbon dioxide removal the ipcc to writes that carbon dioxide removal is required to limit warming to 1.5 degrees and that carbon dioxide removal is part of all modeled scenarios that limit global warming to 2° or lower by 2100 at this point all realistic future scenarios including those of the European green deal rely on carbon dioxide removal if you also think it's high time to do something to protect our planet's ecosystems then stick around until the end of this episode because I have an inspiring message from my friends at planet wildre that you don't want to miss so yes carbon dioxide removal we need to talk about that carbon dioxide removal means a net negative emission you take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere carbon dioxide removal should not be confused with Kermit the Frog they are two completely different things just checking if you're listening carbon dioxide removal should not be confused with carbon capture and storage CCS for short which is not necessarily even a method of carbon dioxide removal CCs is what you do at a power plant that produces carbon dioxide you filter out the carbon dioxide bind it in some kind of solid and bury It capture and store but if you dig up fossil fuels and burn them then capturing the carbon dioxide before it goes into the atmosphere can at the very best lead to net zero emissions in practice it's still a small positive emission so carbon capture and storage at fossil fuel plants is not a method of carbon removal it's just a method to reduce carbon emissions and it's not Kermit the Frog either but CCS will remove net carbon if you do it with biomass like you grow trees or other plants which collect carbon basically then you burn them but rather than just giving the carbon back into the air you catch and bury it this will actually reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air so it's carbon removal it's called backs bio energy with carbon capture and storage there are also other ways to remove carbon dioxide like you can pump air through giant filters and extract the carbon dioxide this is known as direct air capture since water takes up carbon dioxide from the air you can try to extract it from the water instead you can also cover large areas of land with minerals that capture carbon this is known as rock weathering or you can burn biomass with a special method and catch the carbon in stuff called biochar I I talked about the different methods in a previous episode at present we remove a bit more than 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year from the atmosphere but that's almost all by vegetation it's somewhat of a stretch to say that we remove it it's really trees then again for all I know you might be a tree if that's the case please say hi in the comments unfortunately it's difficult to significantly increase the amount of vegetation on the planet the part that we can improve the one that comes from new technologies of carbon removal is at present 2.3 million tons a year that's about 0.1% of the total nearly all of the 2.3 million tons are either bioenergy with carbon capture and storage or biochar how much carbon do we need to remove according to a recent report by an international group of scientists to stay below two degrees of warming will need to remove almost an addition additional billion ton each year by 2030 by 2050 that'll need to be almost 5 billion tons each year so those 2.3 million need to go to about a billion in 7 years yeah I can't see that happening either neither can people who study these things for a living in 2023 the first Global assessment of carbon dioxide removal appeared the report estimates that if we include all new technologies of carbon removal that are currently being developed we could get to roughly 12 million tons per year by 2025 they extrapolate optimistically to 2030 and say that by that time we could see about 40 million tons just as a reminder we'll need to reach 5 billion billion with a be like bonkers the report also very nicely says that announced carbon dioxide removal targets from industry groups and companies imply faster growth than has been seen historically for most Technologies Zing why are we not making more Headway on this I think it's a two-part problem one is that a lot of people are confusing carbon dioxide removal with carbon capture and storage but carbon capture and storage at fossil fuel plants doesn't even count as carbon removal on the other hand carbon capture and storage with biomass does these are two different shoes entirely and by the way neither of them is Kermit the Frog this confusion then ties into the next problem which is that some environmental groups are lobbying against carbon capture and storage at fossil fuel plants and then they're throwing out the baby that's the carbon removal with the bath water that's fossil fuse with ccs Green Piece in two form basically claims that CCs is a scam by the fossil fuel industry which is secretly planning to use this captured car carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery but even the European environmental Bureau has expressed concerns about carbon capture and storage saying they believe that this technology would not encourage the switch away from combustion based processes someone should tell them that the problem is not the combustion it's the release of carbon dioxide during the combustion in summary there's no way will reach Net Zero by 2050 without rapidly building capacity for active carbon dioxide removal that said let me mention something that's particularly close to my heart a small step with which you and I both can make this world a little bit better and a little bit Greener without much effort Planet wild is an Environmental Protection Organization and they're funding ecosystem restoration projects to preserve our nature and Wildlife I've been involved with Planet wild for some while now and they've been doing amazing work they carry out a new reing Mission every month and they document all this work with video reports right here on YouTube this way you can see for yourself how they're making a difference and what impact they're having in their latest video they're going out on the water to collect data to better understand how dolphins are affected by increasing tourism and how to protect them I support Planet wild because it has a direct impact on preserving nature and I believe in taking small scale action myself rather than just waiting for others to finally do something if you want to join a growing community that makes a real difference in protecting our ecosystems check out Planet wild and consider becoming a supporter I'll cover the first month of your subscription if you're among the first 200 people signing up with the code zabina if you want to get to know them better first check out the latest mission video here thanks for watching see you next week

Channel: Sabine Hossenfelder

Views: 431,692

Keywords: science without the gobbledygoook, hossenfelder, net zero, what is net zero, what is net zero carbon emissions, carbon emissions, climate change, renewable energy, net zero is bonkers, science humor, net zero farce, net zero facts, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide removal, climate, net zero myth

Id: 2bJTOymi3eo

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 11 2023