Though the ambitious 1.5-degree Celsius target set forth in the Paris Agreement is now widely considered to be out of reach given global trends, the fallback of 2.0 degrees remains in the frame. To limit warming to that level, though, would still require huge shifts in policy and action, as the path we are collectively on right now is estimated to yield somewhere around 2.7 degrees C or more. Two new data points, though, suggest this is going to be even harder than we thought.
Taken together: We’re off track from being off track.
“We found that peak warming could be much higher than previously expected under low-to-moderate emission scenarios,” said the study’s lead author Christine Kaufhold, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in a press release. The researchers projected climate changes out to 1,000 years, generally longer than the modeling incorporating feedback loops has done so far, and examined a range possible “equilibrium climate sensitivities,” essentially the way the planet’s temperature responds to the things we put into the atmosphere. They found that only very low emissions scenarios, and climate sensitivities below the current best guess, would actually keep warming below 2.0 degrees.
“The window for limiting global warming to below 2°C is rapidly closing,” said co-author Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute. “We are already seeing signs that the Earth system is losing resilience, which may trigger feedbacks that increase climate sensitivity, accelerate warming and increase deviations from predicted trends. To secure a liveable future, we must urgently step up our efforts to reduce emissions.”
Those efforts are… lagging. The good news from 2024 is that the total installed clean energy capacity exceeded 700 gigawatts, setting a record for the 22nd consecutive year. Renewables and nuclear power installations last year accounted for 80 percent of the newly installed electricity capacity. The bad news is that it’s not enough.
“Electricity use is growing rapidly, pulling overall energy demand along with it to such an extent that it is enough to reverse years of declining energy consumption in advanced economies,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol, upon release of the new report. Globally, energy demand rose by 2.2 percent in 2024, below the 3.2 percent growth in global GDP but well ahead of the 1.3 percent average seen in the previous decade. Advanced economies saw demand growth of about one percent, after several years of overall declines; developing countries accounted for 80 percent of the increase in demand.
The demand spike was driven by electricity use, which increased by 1,100 terawatt-hours, or about 4.3 percent over the previous year. This was thanks to a few factors — it was the warmest year on record, of course, and cooling demands were higher than ever; the transport fleet is, slowly, electrifying; and the generally obscene boom in data centers and AI is thirstily groping for more and more processing power.
Though renewable energy continues to enjoy a remarkable boom in response, it simply isn’t keeping up. Natural gas demand also expanded in 2024, by 2.7 percent, well over the average increase in the preceding years. Oil demand also rose, though by less — 0.8 percent — and even coal saw a bump thanks to extreme heat waves in India and China. The report notes the trend toward a “decoupling” of emissions and economic growth, which is some good news, but only if you squint a bit.
To recap: The world is not meeting the increasing energy demands fast enough to match the agreed-upon emissions reductions scenarios, and those scenarios also may not be enough to meet the warming targets. The solution, such as it is, is “simple”: More action, happening faster.
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