Source: Energy & Management Powernews, April 06, 2022
According to the 6th report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the peak of climate gas emissions must be reached before the year 2025 to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.
On the evening of April 4, the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC was presented. According to it, too little is still happening to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees. But this is necessary to avert catastrophic climate change, the researchers reminded. "We are at a crossroads. The choices we make now can ensure a livable future," said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. "We have the tools and knowledge to limit warming."
Despite the economic collapse following the Covid 19 pandemic, there has been no sustained reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the IPCC said. On average, global greenhouse gas emissions between 2010 and 2019 were higher than at any time in human history. However, the rate of growth has slowed, it said. The peak of global emissions must be reached before 2025, however, and by 2030 emissions must fall by 43%, the scientists demanded.
Possibilities for action named
To do this, they said, rapid, far-reaching and mostly immediate measures are needed. Especially in energy production, the use of fossil fuels must be significantly reduced quickly, he said. Instead, renewable energy sources should be used and energy should be used sparingly. Alternative energies should also be used in industry and recycling should be practiced. Climate gas storage could also help, the IPCC said. Hundreds of scientists from 65 countries had evaluated tens of thousands of studies for the IPCC report in recent years.
All sectors of the economy, but especially buildings and transport, should be converted to climate-neutral energies and become more efficient, advises the international panel of experts. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres responded with a harsh indictment of nations that continue to build fossil-fuel power plants and miss their climate-protection targets: "They are suffocating our planet" and "setting a clear course toward an uninhabitable Earth," he said in a video message. According to Guterres, the dangerous radicals are not climate activists, but those countries that are expanding the production of fossil fuels.
Reactions in Germany
The IPCC report also triggered calls for more climate protection measures in Germany. Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) sees it as evidence of the need for research into technological responses to global warming. For example, she said in Berlin, industry must switch to hydrogen and mobility must be made climate-friendly. "We need to develop new technologies and methods, for example to remove CO2 from the atmosphere," she said. "We would rather focus on innovation than abandonment," the minister summed up.
The state secretary at the German Foreign Office and special envoy for international climate policy, Jennifer Morgan, expressed extreme alarm. The German government wants to use its presidency of the G7 group of developed countries to convince other countries to make more efforts to protect the climate, she said. "In this, the industrialized countries have a special responsibility and must lead the way," Morgan said. States that suffer most from climate change should be given special support.
Climate protection is self-interest
Katharina Reuter, executive director of the German Sustainable Business Association (BNW), said, "Climate protection is pure self-interest - more and more companies are realizing that." The German government must now ensure that climate protection also pays off, among other things with a plan to reduce climate-damaging subsidies, appealed Reuter. Still flowed in Germany alone annually 60 billion euros in tax benefits for kerosene, diesel and company car privileges.
German experts called for an accelerated exit from the use of fossil fuels - also with reference to the energy dependence on Russia. The director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Ottmar Edenhofer, said a new policy was needed, "in the face of Russian aggression, one that combines energy security and climate security."
The 6th IPCC report is available for download as a PDF.
Author: Susanne Harmsen