DeBriefed 15 September 2023: G20’s big bet on renewables; Libya’s catastrophe; Interview with IEA chief

Simon Evans

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

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§ This week

G20 pledge to triple renewables

JOINT DECLARATION: After months of wrangling, the Indian G20 presidency managed to secure a joint leaders’ declaration this week. The text included a pledge to “pursue and encourage efforts” to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030, the Associated Press reported. The global goal, widely understood to mean 11,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, is “vital” to keeping 1.5C within reach, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in July. IEA chief Dr Fatih Birol told DeBriefed it was a “good step, but far from enough” (see Spotlight).

FOSSIL FAIL: The G20 “failed to make any progress towards a commitment to phase out fossil fuels”, Climate Home News reported. Language on fossil fuels and on peaking emissions by 2025 “could not be resolved”, said a non-G20 delegate quoted by the Hindustan Times. In an interview with the paper, India’s climate minister Bhupender Yadav said emissions peaking was an “area of disagreement”.

COP28 COMMITMENT? “Attention will now turn to whether countries can agree a phase out of all fossil fuels at [the upcoming UN climate summit] COP28,” the Financial Times reported. The COP28 presidency’s “vision” for the summit, released in July, said tripling renewables was a way “to enable phase-down of fossil fuels” – but stopped short of endorsing a standalone fossil-fuel target. The Times of India quoted Aditya Lolla at Ember saying the G20 outcome “dramatically increases the odds” of the upcoming UN climate summit agreeing to the renewable goal.

Libya’s catastrophic floods

STORM DANIEL: The north African country Libya was hit by “catastrophic floods” this week, killing thousands of people in the port city of Derna, the Guardian reported, after heavy rains during Storm Daniel triggered the collapse of two “badly maintained dams”. The death toll could reach 20,000, BBC News said. The resulting floods “swe[pt] away entire neighbourhoods”, reported the New York Times. The head of the World Meteorological Organization said many of the casualties could have been avoided if early warning systems were in place, Reuters reported.

RECORD RAIN: The storm was a “Mediterranean hurricane-like system known as a medicane”, BBC News explained, adding that “climate change is thought to be increasing the frequency of the strongest medicanes”. The storm “brought more than 400mm of rain to parts of the north-east coast within a 24-hour period”, it continued, which was a rainfall record, according to Libya’s National Meteorological Centre. Derna’s September average is just 1.5mm, said Nasa’s Earth Observatory, which noted that Storm Daniel had “swamped parts of Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria” before making landfall in Libya.

‘CLIMATE CATASTROPHE’: Climate change “makes heavy rain more common”, explained NPR. Time said climate change “likely contributed” to the severity of the flooding. Above-average temperatures in the Mediterranean “fuelled the storm’s heavy rainfall”, said CNN. Bloomberg also explored the links between climate change and weather extremes. Yale Climate Connections called the floods in Libya “a climate and infrastructure catastrophe”. It said Storm Daniel was Africa’s deadliest storm on record. Guardian diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour said the disaster was the “result of climate crisis meeting a failed state”. 

§ Around the world

  • SIZZLING SUMMER: Last month was the hottest August since records began, according to an update from Berkeley Earth, clocking in at 1.68C above pre-industrial temperatures – a full 0.3C above the previous record. This year is now “virtually certain (>99%)” to be the hottest on record, the group said.
  • BOILER BAN: Germany’s Bundestag passed “watered-down” legislation phasing out fossil-fuel heating systems, the Financial Times reported. It will only achieve three-quarters of the emissions cuts planned and got mixed reactions from environment and industry groups, said Clean Energy Wire.
  • EXXON KNEW: The Wall Street Journal has published a fresh investigation based on internal documents into how executives from oil major ExxonMobil “strategised to diminish concerns about warming temperatures”. In response, the company’s CEO told the publication: “None of these old emails and notes matter.”
  • SMALL ISLAND SUIT: Nine small island states asked the UN “oceans court” to rule that excess emissions violate international law, the New York Times reported. The group wants the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to decide if emissions absorbed by the ocean count as pollution, Agence France-Presse said.
  • SUMMIT SYNERGY: Ahead of next week’s big UN summits on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and raising climate ambition, the UN published a report saying there were “strong synergies” between the two.
  • DISASTER DAMAGES: The US has already set a record for the number of extreme weather events causing more than $1bn of damages in a single year, with 23 disasters costing $56.7bn in 2023 so far, the Guardian reported.

§ 1,000,000,000,000

The amount of solar capacity in watts that China will install by 2026, doubling the 500 gigawatts expected by the end of this year, reported Reuters.

§ Latest climate research

  • The Antarctic is warming twice as fast as the global average, according to new research published in Nature Climate Change covered in a Carbon Brief guest post.
  • Halving meat and dairy consumption could “almost fully halt” global forest loss to agriculture, said research in Nature Communications reported by Carbon Brief.
  • Heat pumps are twice as efficient as oil and gas boilers even in cold weather, according to a widely-covered commentary published in Joule.

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

§ Captured

Image - global_ev_sales (note)

Global sales of electric vehicles (EVs) are surging, going from one in every 25 cars sold in 2020 to nearly one in five in 2023. But there’s uncertainty over just how quickly they will displace combustion engine cars – and oil demand – with expert forecasts for EVs’ share of sales in 2030 including 21% (Shell) and 35% (International Energy Agency). New figures from the Rocky Mountain Institute point far higher, to 62-86% by 2030 under “fast” or “faster” adoption, with EV sales overtaking combustion cars – globally – as soon as 2026.

§ Spotlight

International Energy Agency chief speaks to Carbon Brief

Image - Faith_Birol (note)

This week, Carbon Brief interviews Dr Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), asking for his reflections on last weekend’s G20 leaders’ declaration, the new IEA finding that all fossil fuels will peak this decade and his hopes for the COP28 climate summit. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Carbon Brief: Your call for tripling renewables by 2030 now has G20 backing. What should come next?

Fatih Birol: The Indian G20 presidency took place in a very difficult international geopolitical context. I think it is a great success that the Indian government brought all of the G20 members together to sign this joint declaration. As far as energy and climate is concerned, I am happy the G20 countries agreed our recommendation in line with our net-zero report to tripling renewable capacity [by 2030]. But, in the same declaration, they talk about the importance of 1.5C. I am afraid that tripling renewable capacity alone will not bring us even close to that target…I wanted to see at least two other important points. One is, as we recommended, doubling progress on energy efficiency globally. And, maybe even more importantly, giving a signal to the markets and the governments and companies around the world that in order to reach this 1.5C target, we have to see fossil-fuel use decline. So, in the absence of these other dimensions, the renewable capacity growth statement is a good step, but far from being enough to be in line with the 1.5C target.

CB: You said this week that coal, oil and gas will all now peak this decade. What changed?

FB: Many things [have] changed, but I think three things are clear. One, the spectacular rise of solar energy around the world. Two, the huge increase of electric cars. Just to give you one number, only two years ago, one out of 25 sold in the world was electric. This year, according to our analysis, it will be one out of five. The third reason is China, which was – by far – the single most important driver of oil, gas and coal [demand] globally. In the last 10 years, China was responsible for about two-thirds of global oil consumption growth, one third of natural gas consumption growth and over 90% of coal consumption growth. Now, the Chinese economy is – everybody agrees – slowing down, and it is seeing a structural shift from being more heavy industry, towards lighter industry and services. Putting these three things together – solar, EVs and China – we now see a peak in fossil fuels within this decade. Of course, this peak is important, but more important in my view is what kind of decline of fossil-fuel consumption we see after the peak. With current policies – while we see the peak – we still will be in line with a temperature increase of 2.4C, so far from being in line with our Paris targets.

CB: The [UNFCCC’s] global stocktake report reiterates the huge ambition gap for 1.5C. How should COP28 respond?

FB: There are at least two junctures where I hope this will be corrected. One of them is, next week, we have the UN secretary general’s day where implementation and ambition will be discussed. I will be talking about these issues and appealing to countries to raise their ambitions and implement them. The second will be COP28 and, again, here will be an opportunity for countries to raise their ambitions and be credible between what they say and what they plan in their economies. I would like to see many things. But if I have to pick only four: renewable capacity increase by three; doubling of energy efficiency; giving a signal to markets of unabated fossil-fuel phaseout; and, fourth, some commitment from the oil and gas industry in terms of their scope 1 and scope 2 emissions reductions, and, at the same time, making a commitment to increase the share of green-energy investments in their portfolios.

§ Watch, read, listen

‘CULTURE WAR’: The shift to cheaper and lower-carbon sources of energy risks being held up by a “culture war”, said a Financial Times feature.

MOTTLEY CREW: An all-star cast including Barbados PM Mia Mottley, the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, Kenya’s William Ruto, COP28 president Sultan Al-Jaber and energy agency chiefs Dr Fatih Birol and Francesco La Camera penned a comment for Politico calling for a “course-correction on the global energy transition”.

‘GREEN ROAD’: An editorial in the Chinese state-run People’s Daily called for China’s “belt and road” global infrastructure initiative to become a “green road”.

§ Coming up

§ Pick of the jobs

DeBriefed is written in rotation by Carbon Brief’s team and edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to [email protected]

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