Rich countries must close all their coal-fired power plants by 2030 to have a chance of holding global warming to tolerable levels, a report from an environmental research group said.
China would have to phase out the most polluting fossil fuel by 2040 and the rest of the world by 2050, according to Climate Analytics, a Berlin-based nonprofit that is studying how nations can meet the emissions goals they agreed at UN talks in Paris last year.
The findings illustrate the difficulty in achieving the UN goal of holding global warming to well-below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The world already has 8,175 coal plants and is building another 733, providing about 40 percent of all electricity.
Envoys from more than 190 nations are meeting this week and next in Marrakech, Morocco, to discuss how to take forward the ambitions they set out in Paris.
“Both shutting down existing coal and avoiding new coal build is absolutely essential to avoid devastating air pollution and climate impacts,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of the environmental group Greenpeace International.
Pollution from coal plants could create 2.5 times more carbon-dioxide emissions than allowed by scenarios consistent with 2 degrees of warming, the report said.
If coal plants remain open, the world would have to rely, instead, on geoengineering, which may include pouring nutrients into oceans to save coral habitats or spraying tiny particles into the Earth’s atmosphere to reflect sun rays back into space, the report said. Such proposals have been shunned because of their unpredictable consequences on global ecosystems.
The Marrakech meeting has been overshadowed by Donald Trump’s victory in the US election on Tuesday. The president-elect has said climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese and vowed to scrap US participation in the Paris Agreement and stimulate coal and production.
Trump may have difficulty reversing coal’s decline as a power-generation fuel, since cheap natural gas has cut its market share.
“Although the US election has created short-term tailwinds for the coal industry, the medium- and long- term outlooks point to continued decline,” said Tom Sanzillo, finance director at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, an environmental researcher based in Cleveland, Ohio.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday he will continue his efforts to implement the Paris Agreement on global warming until the day President Barack Obama leaves office on January 20.
Speaking in New Zealand following a trip to Antarctica, Kerry said his administration would continue to do everything possible to meet its responsibility to future generations.
Kerry has long championed climate action, but now his legacy is under threat under the Trump administration.
Under the deal, which came into force this month, countries have agreed to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Achieving the goal will require a major shift away from fossil fuels.
Kerry said it would be up to the Trump administration to define itself on climate change. He said sometimes there is a divide between what is said on the campaign trail and what is done in governance.
But Kerry appeared to take a swipe at Trump when he listed some of the ways in which global warming could already be seen. He said globally there were more fires, floods and damaging storms, and sea levels were rising.
“The evidence is mounting in ways that people in public life should not dare to avoid accepting as a mandate for action,” Kerry said.
He also made a point of crediting a previous Republican president, George H.W. Bush, with first joining the global effort to address climate change in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
“Now the world’s scientific community has concluded that climate change is happening beyond any doubt. And the evidence is there for everybody to see,” Kerry said.
He said he thinks his administration is on the right track, because the majority of Americans believe climate change is happening and want action.
“So we will wait to see how the next administration addresses this,” he said.
Kerry plans to fly this week to a global climate conference in Morocco, where he will give a major speech. Officials there have begun working on a “rulebook” to implement the Paris deal. Bloomberg News and AP