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| Mon, 10th May 2021 0:57:00 |
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Net zero faces fierce criticism |
"The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect one"
Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831
The backlash is underway. And it's coming from the unlikeliest of quarters.
For much of the past two years the global push to deliver net-zero emissions has enjoyed a remarkable golden run. National and state governments have rushed to announce long term net-zero emissions goals, to the point where around two-thirds of global GDP is covered by some form of target. Businesses and investors have followed suit, with over 2,100 of the world's largest corporates having set net-zero goals under the U.N.-backed Race to Zero campaign while asset managers and owners worth trillions of dollars have pledged to deliver net-zero emission portfolios by mid-century at the latest.
These various goals have helped trigger billions of dollars of investment in low carbon infrastructure and R&D, as well as an entire new ecosystem of campaigners, academics, regulators, investors, politicians, and business executives who are working round the clock to translate long-term net-zero ambitions into credible near term decarbonization strategies. While still daunted by the epic and tragic scale of the climate crisis, this community has been buoyed by the way in which their work already has helped deliver both plummeting clean technology costs and a decoupling of greenhouse gas emissions and global GDP.
Less than six years on from the Paris Agreement, the combination of the landmark accord's 1.5 degree Celsius temperature goal and its commitment to "achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century" has unleashed one of the fastest and most consequential corporate trends since the inception of the first Industrial Revolution. It is, in many regards, one of the most successful environmental campaigns in history.
And now it is facing fierce criticism not just from the perennial climate-denying opponents of climate action, who allege the net-zero mission is an exorbitantly expensive and unnecessary pipe dream, but also from a growing number of the world's most influential and respected environmental campaigners and scientists.
Trials and tribulations
It seems each story announcing a fresh net-zero pledge now sparks outraged warnings on social media that "net-zero is not zero" or heartfelt explanations as to why net-zero commitments are meaningless "greenwash" and what is needed is "real zero," like, yesterday.
This critique has been amplified by Greta Thunberg, who has used her huge Twitter platform and vital position as one of the world's only functioning accountability mechanisms to warn that "net-zero targets" are "being used as excuses to postpone real action." "Yes we need to balance out some emissions that can't be eliminated (agriculture etc)," she argued in April. "But as it is now I dare to claim that these distant net-zero targets aren't about that, rather they're about communication tactics and making it seem like we're acting without having to change." She also shared a "Friends" meme which offered a similar, if pithier, analysis:
These widespread and understandable concerns were expanded upon in an article for The Conversation from three of Europe's leading environmental scientists. Under the headline "Climate scientists: concept of net-zero is a dangerous trap," the University of Exeter's James Dyke, the University of East Anglia's Robert Watson and the University of Lund's Wolfgang Knorr condemned the "fantasy of net-zero" and concluded "current net-zero policies will not keep warming to within 1.5C because they were never intended to." The article was quickly shared by Thunberg, who hailed it as "one of the most important and informative texts I have ever read on the climate- and ecological crises."
In further evidence that Shakespeare was right about the way in which trials and tribulations can lead to "strange bedfellows," these attacks on the net-zero movement's entire conceptual underpinning already has been seized upon by traditional opponents of climate action who wilfully misunderstand environmentalists' legitimate concerns about the efficacy of emissions targets and twist their analysis to argue decarbonization goals are all a crock. As one observer noted to me privately, when The Australian newspaper is praising Thunberg for exposing "the emptiness" of climate promises then something has gone pretty awry.
Why now?
So, what is going on here? Why is the concept of net-zero emissions under fire just as it emerges as the "North Star" for economic and industrial strategy in many of the world's most powerful economies? And does it matter? Will well-intentioned critiques of demonstrably inadequate net-zero strategies catalyze more ambitious decarbonization plans or will they inadvertently undermine a trend that has helped successfully push climate issues up the corporate and political agenda?
The first thing to say is that much of the criticism of net-zero strategies from Thunberg, Dyke, Watson, Knorr, et al is entirely justified.
There is an old jokey disclaimer deployed by journalists where we protest that we "don't write the headlines." It is a defense against the condemnation that comes our way when an eager subeditor uses a headline to overstate or simplify the details contained in the rest of an article. Last month's long read in The Conversation is something of a case in point. The headline may bluntly describe net-zero as a "dangerous trap," but the article itself offers a nuanced and in-depth assessment of the risks attached to the net-zero concept. It acknowledges the goal of ensuring residual emissions of greenhouse gases are balanced by technologies to remove them from the atmosphere is "a great idea, in principle," just as it accepts how "in principle there is nothing wrong or dangerous about carbon dioxide removal proposals."
But it also warns that the net-zero narrative's focus on negative emissions technologies and techniques — all of which face massive technological, economic and land use challenges when used at scale — risks being used to justify continued investment in fossil fuel infrastructure and distract from the urgent need to deliver "sustained radical cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in a socially just way." Amen to all of that.
It is possible to disagree with the authors' belief that "net-zero has licensed a recklessly cavalier 'burn now, pay later' approach which has seen carbon emissions continue to soar" and share their concerns that emerging negative emissions technologies and techniques, such as biomass with carbon capture and storage, direct air carbon capture, mass nature-based solutions and even geo-engineering, can be used to bolster the business case for extremely high risk investments in new fossil fuel infrastructure.
It is possible to reject the idea that net-zero policies are primarily designed to perpetuate business as usual and still share the fears of Dyke et al that such policies in their current guise are often poorly defined, insufficiently ambitious and inadequately policed. It is possible to think Thunberg's attacks on net-zero goals could prove counterproductive if they are not very carefully targeted and still think she is one of the best things to happen to the environmental movement in years and a vital voice holding governments and businesses to account.
As analyses from the likes of Carbon Tracker and CDP repeatedly have stressed, many net-zero pledges put forward by the world's leading carbon intensive corporates and investors are deeply flawed and are not backed by credible strategies to wind down fossil fuel infrastructure and pivot towards clean technologies at sufficient pace. These inadequate strategies have been enabled by the continuing failure to establish clear standards that properly define what delivering net-zero emissions entails — a problem that was highlighted recently by Mark Carney's quickly repudiated suggestion that a portfolio containing fossil fuel-related assets could describe itself as "net-zero" so long as it also invested in renewables.
Meanwhile, at the national level you would be hard pressed to find a government with a genuinely comprehensive net-zero strategy. The U.K. was the first major economy to set a net-zero target, has the most impressive decarbonization track record of any industrialized country, and has just set some of the world's most ambitious medium-term emissions goals. And yet the government is still tying itself in knots as it combines support for a world-leading renewables industry and a relatively rapid phase out of internal combustion engine vehicles with plans for a new coal mine and a refusal to rule out a fresh wave of North Sea oil and gas exploration.
Against this backdrop Thunberg's fear net-zero targets can be used as cover for continued investment in fossil fuel assets is completely legitimate and understandable. As Dyke et al argue every one of the prospective negative emissions industries — whether they are focused on tree-planting or mechanically scrubbing the atmosphere of its CO2 — face immense technical, financial, and political barriers hampering their adoption at scale.
And yet they are routinely factored into official decarbonization models at both a governmental and corporate level, disguising the fact there is a very real risk these negative emissions strategies could fail and necessitate even steeper emissions cuts to deliver on the goals of the Paris Agreement. It amounts to an extremely high risk, perhaps even reckless strategy, even before you consider the existential dread that comes with recent news from the IEA that global emissions are already spiraling back towards pre-pandemic levels.
The entire global economy continues to resemble an obese man ordering a box of doughnuts because he has just read that a diet pill trial has delivered some modestly encouraging results.
Defending net-zero
And yet, I can't help feel these legitimate critiques of the weaknesses of various net-zero strategies risk tipping over into a knee-jerk dismissal of the concept as a whole — a concept that will be right at the heart of any attempt to avert a climate catastrophe, regardless of the rhetorical framing deployed.
The elision of "net-zero" and "not zero" may be largely confined to social media, but as it gathers momentum it risks tarnishing the credibility of all the myriad good faith attempts to harness a portfolio of solutions to slash emissions as quickly as possible and deliver on the goals of the Paris Agreement. A blanket dismissal of the net-zero concept demands not that polluters come forward with credible strategies that could work in both principle and in practice, but rather fuels the impression any and all plans are "greenwash" and are not worthy of consideration.
Counterintuitively, it establishes a discourse that makes life easier for "greenwashers" and makes it harder to distinguish between those net-zero strategies that will help the world deliver on its climate goals and those that nefariously seek to delay meaningful action.
Dyke et al allege net-zero targets "were and still are driven by a need to protect business as usual, not the climate." It is a serious charge to level at the architects of the Paris Agreement and the many businesses around the world striving to transform themselves as part of an epoch-shaping attempt to drive the fastest industrial revolution in history. It is certainly true of some net-zero strategies. But it is a funny sort of business as usual that has in the space of five years helped create a scenario where the bulk of the global auto industry is publicly committed to electrifying all their models, renewables are the default source of new capacity in most markets around the world, coal companies are going bankrupt and oil majors are totting up their write-downs, national climate laws are being rushed onto statute books, the public is routinely demanding climate action is treated as a top priority and billions of dollars of R&D funding is flowing into green aviation and shipping, smart grids and energy storage, and, yes, nature-based carbon sinks and carbon capture and use technologies.
This edging away from business as usual undoubtedly has come decades too late and thus far only has delivered a plateauing of global emissions. As such the sense of anger and frustration that pervades attacks on the net-zero movement is both palpable and understandable. But it is also true the Paris Agreement and the net-zero ambitions it has unleashed has established the conditions in which a shift away from coal mines, oil refineries, gas boilers, and internal combustion engines, and towards renewables, hydrogen, heat pumps and batteries looks not just possible but all but inevitable.
The world is still a long way from being on track to meet its net-zero targets, but a global emissions peak is finally within grasp. Steep emissions reductions could then follow, powered by the pursuit of those much-disparaged net-zero goals.
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