The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have released their latest report, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. It lays out a road map for how governments can tackle the climate crisis, before it’s too late. The full report is more than 3,000 pages long, so luckily Severn Wye are on hand to give you the headlines and tell you why it matters.
What are the main headlines from the report?
We’ve summarised the key takeaways from Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, to make it easier for people who want to be in the know to get the information they need.
- Emissions are still rising, but the rate has slowed. There’s been a 12% jump in emissions since 2010, or an average increase of 1.3% each year. By comparison, emissions rose by around 2.3% each year in the previous decade, around twice as fast. However, emissions need to fall to zero for us to avoid the worst effects of climate change, and this needs to start in the next thirty months.
- A huge investment in renewable energy is needed, along with a near complete withdrawal from using fossil fuels. The IPCC have warned fossil fuel companies that they stand to lose trillions of dollars if governments act as they must.
- Current climate pledges by governments will not keep temperatures at the necessary 1.5°C above preindustrial levels that was promised at the 2015 Paris agreement. In reality, the planet is on course for 3°C temperature rises over the coming decades.
- Governments (and other vested interests such as big business) would have to reconcile themselves to a slowing of economic growth, keeping it under 2.7% by 2050. The short-term impact of this is likely to be outweighed by the overall economic benefit of keeping warming under control, however.
- Changes to economic growth can only be made if people change their lifestyles (and governments support and enforce this). Travelling less by plane and car and eating a plant-based diet are just some of the necessary lifestyle changes.
- There are a few positives in the report, such as the lowering of the price of renewable energy. A unit of solar energy now costs on average 85% less than it did in 2010 and wind power is now 55% cheaper.
- We need to protect and restore nature, as well as develop technology to remove carbon that’s already in the atmosphere. We must end large-scale deforestation and acknowledge that indigenous peoples are best placed to protect the natural world, so their work must be supported and invested in. This most recent IPCC report also named Colonialism for the first time as a historic and ongoing driver of climate change.
What does all this really mean?
To put it bluntly, if the planet becomes too hot (say at the 3°C mark mentioned above), large areas of the globe will become too hot to work in. There will be mass harvest failures, causing increasing global hunger. Melting icecaps would eventually cause sea levels to rise to the point that major cities are submerged.
If we want to make a difference to the changing climate, our lifestyles will have to change dramatically. How we travel, eat and shop will all have to shift significantly. The good news is that changes in lifestyle remains a huge untapped resource when it comes to the climate crisis. The IPCC report estimated that changes in lifestyle could result in a 40-70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. A lot of these changes can improve our health and wellbeing too.
Although there’s a lot of talk that cutting emissions will cost money, serious climate disasters such as famine, flood and harvest failure will cost significantly more than cutting carbon. Global GDP (gross domestic product, the total market value of all goods and services) is predicted to double by 2050, and it’s true that halving emissions by 2030 would reduce this increase by 1-2%. But compared to this small loss, cutting emissions is an investment in our future and in our survival.
What are we doing to help?
One big positive highlight from the report is the big potential impact the energy-efficient homes could have in tackling the climate crisis. Our work is all about supporting households and communities to reduce their carbon emissions, live more sustainably and save money in the process.
[et_pb_icon font_icon=”||divi||400″ icon_color=”#EC6535″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][/et_pb_icon]Our Sustainable Home Energy team work with people experiencing fuel poverty, to increase their energy efficiency and energy resilience. They promote the uptake and understanding of domestic Retrofit, enabling people to see the untapped energy potential in their own homes. Right now there is grant funding available to promote the use of renewable energy such as Solar, and to support households to adopt carbon-saving technologies more affordably.
[et_pb_icon font_icon=”||divi||400″ icon_color=”#EC6535″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][/et_pb_icon]Our Sustainable Organisations team help businesses and organisations to reduce their carbon footprint, promoting renewable technologies and on-site energy generation. Over the past year, we have facilitated access to more than £4 million in grant funding for renewable technologies via our Target2030 programme, that offers 30% grant funding and free energy surveys to SMEs in Gloucestershire, Swindon and Wiltshire.
[et_pb_icon font_icon=”||divi||400″ icon_color=”#EC6535″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][/et_pb_icon]Our Sustainable technologies team contribute to Research and Development studies that are exploring the future of renewable energy, particularly making bio-energy work in the real world. Our Mersey Biochar project aims to develop a community-owned carbon capture energy solution that support the local community, woodland and forestry industry. To meet the targets outlined in the IPCC’s latest report, developing carbon capture technology (ways of holding and storing carbon to prevent it entering the atmosphere) are essential. The project makes use of local biowaste materials and captures carbon in two ways, through the production of solid biochar (a charcoal that can be used as a soil conditioner and be added to animal feed in order to reduce methane emissions) and flue gas, which can be used to heat local homes.
[et_pb_icon font_icon=”||divi||400″ icon_color=”#EC6535″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][/et_pb_icon]Our Sustainable Communities team work with communities to support them in becoming sustainable, through holistic, place-based regeneration plans that help them to build on their strengths and culture, creating a lasting, self-sustaining future. The IPCC report makes clear how vital it is for us all to change our lifestyles to reduce carbon emissions and to reframe out expectations of economic growth in order to work within the limitations (and opportunities) of our natural environment. This is what our Sustainable Communities work is all about, developing more sustainable, circular economies in rural areas whose local economies have been decimated in favour of centralised, unstable ‘boom’ economies.
If all of this has got you thinking and you want to know more about how you can reduce your carbon emissions, why not get in touch with our friendly adviceline? If you’re based in Gloucestershire or South Gloucestershire, call us for free on 0800 500 3076. In Herefordshire, you can call us for free on 0800 677 1432.
For a range of advice and support with saving energy at home, as well as alternative ways of getting in touch with our Sustainable Home Energy team, check out our websites. For Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire, click here. For Herefordshire, the link you need is here.
Who are the IPCC? The people behind the acronym
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the United Nations body set up to evaluate and track the science of climate change. Formed in 1988, the objective of the IPCC is to provide governments with the science they need to create policies that address what’s really going on with the climate. It’s an organization of governments that are members either of the United Nations, or of the World Meteorological Association. There are currently 195 member countries, but thousands of individual people contribute to the work of the IPCC, including the reports it produces.
So how are these reports put together?
To write these reports, leading scientists from the IPCC member countries give up their time to collate all the relevant research that has been carried out on climate change each year. They produce a comprehensive summary of their findings, what we know about climate change, what future risks might be and how these risks can be mitigated. The purpose of this research review is to provide a scientific and transparent process on which the IPCC can base its reports. It makes sure that their understanding of the climate situation is objective and comprehensive. So, the IPCC doesn’t conduct its own research, but uses expert scientists to create the widest ranging and scientific reports possible.
This report is the third instalment of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report. The first instalment, published last August, was entitled Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, which covered how human activity has changed the climate in unprecedented ways. The second instalment followed in February 2022. Entitled Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, this report demonstrated that we are now locked in to some of the worst affects of climate change, whether we decarbonise or not. This final report builds on these initial findings to map out the road ahead and give governments a plan for mitigation that could still make an impact if action is taken now.
It’s worth knowing however that the main reports produced by the IPCC (which are usually several thousand pages long) are boiled down to a ‘summary for policy makers’ report (SPM), the main headlines of which are agreed in conjunction with government leaders. There have been criticisms in the past that this has lead to a ‘watering down’ of the messages and that new scientific discoveries about the climate are side-lined. All the different versions of the report are made available online (the SPM, a Technical Summary and the full report), so it’s worth paying close attention to what information you’re reading about the report and where its come from.
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