If power plants, boilers, furnaces, vehicles, and other energy infrastructure is not marked for early retirement, the world will fail to meet the 1.5-degree Celsius climate-stabilizing goal set out by the Paris Agreement, but could still reach the 2-degree Celsius goal, says the latest from the ongoing collaboration between the University of California Irvine’s Steven Davis and Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira.
If power plants, boilers, furnaces, vehicles, and other energy infrastructure is not marked for early retirement, the world will fail to meet the 1.5-degree Celsius climate-stabilizing goal set out by the Paris Agreement, but could still reach the 2-degree Celsius goal, says the latest from the ongoing collaboration between the University of California Irvine’s Steven Davis and Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira.
To achieve the objective of limiting warming to no greater than 2 degrees Celsius—or, more optimistically, to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius—it will be necessary to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century.
In this new paper, published in Nature with lead author Dan Tong of UCI, the team calculates that if used at the current rate until they age out of functionality, existing power plants and other fossil-fuel-burning equipment will release about 658 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere—more than half of it by the electricity sector. China is predicted to produce the largest share—41 percent—and the United States and European Union 9 percent and 7 percent respectively.
Read more at Carnegie Institution for Science
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