Quitting fossil fuels: how fast can the world do it?

J. Jewell, M. Vetier, V. Vinichenko, O.M. Lægreid, S. Pai, A. Cherp, H. Brauers, I. Braunger, L. Nacke, H. Zerriffi. (2022). Quitting fossil fuels: how fast can the world do it? Policy brief.

To meet climate targets, fossil fuel use needs to rapidly decline. Has anything similar happened in the past? Do current coal phase-out efforts put us on the path to save the climate? And how would such radical fossil fuel decline affect fossil fuel workers? To answer these questions, we analyzed historical precedents of fossil fuel decline, current efforts to phase-out coal and future pathways to reach climate targets.

We find surprising precedents of decline in the 1970s and 80s when industrialized wealthy economies responded to the oil crises. At the same time, the current pledges of coal phase-out are insufficient to deliver on the 1.5°C targets and are limited to countries with low costs and high enough capacity to overcome those costs. Nevertheless, in spite of the opposition from fossil fuel workers to transitions, we identify opportunities for low-carbon jobs to replace fossil fuel jobs.

Download and read the policy brief from the Contractions project.

Dynamic Evaluation of Policy Feasibility, Feedbacks and the Ambitions of COALitions

S. Bi, N. Bauer, J. Jewell. (2021). Dynamic Evaluation of Policy Feasibility, Feedbacks and the Ambitions of COALitions. In Review. Research Square. PrePrint.

The Paris Agreement prioritised international bottom-up climate negotiations. Meanwhile, research has asserted the coal exit as a prerequisite for Paris-consistent pathways. The Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), an opt-in initiative toward phasing-out coal-fired electricity by mid-century, embodies both paradigms but currently encompasses just 5% of global coal demand. To assess its long-term prospects against Paris-consistent pathways, we couple the energy-economy model REMIND to an empirical coalition accession model and demonstrate a novel scenario analysis technique, Dynamic Policy Evaluation (DPE). Capturing co-evolutionary feedbacks between policy uptake and global energy markets, we simulate nationally-and-temporally-fragmented PPCA accession and analyse its sensitivity to coalition growth, sectoral ambition, and Covid-19-related uncertainty. Surprisingly, we find that virtually global PPCA participation achieves <3% of 1.5oC-consistent coal declines, as non-electric consumption remains unregulated. In contrast, our median-estimate scenario (82% accession) assuming economy wide coverage achieves ~53% efficacy (virtually-global: ~85%), suggesting that the PPCA should prioritise policy ambition over coalition expansion.

Meeting well-below 2°C target would increase energy sector jobs globally

S. Pai, J. Emmerling, L. Drouet, H. Zerriffi & J. Jewell. (2021). Meeting well-below 2°C target would increase energy sector jobs globally. One Earth, 4(7), 1026–1036. Open Access. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.06.005.

To limit global warming to well-below 2°C (WB2C), fossil fuels must be replaced by low-carbon energy sources. Support for this transition is often dampened by the impact on fossil fuel jobs. Previous work shows that pro-climate polices could increase employment by 20 million net energy jobs, but these studies rely on Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) jobs data, assumptions about jobs in non-OECD countries, and a single baseline assumption. Here we combine a global dataset of job intensities across 11 energy technologies and five job categories in 50 countries with an integrated assessment model under three shared socioeconomic pathways. We estimate direct energy jobs under a WB2C scenario and current policy scenarios. We find that, by 2050, energy sector jobs would grow from today’s 18 million to 26 million under a WB2C scenario compared with 21 million under the current policy scenario. Fossil fuel extraction jobs would rapidly decline, but losses will be compensated by gains in solar and wind jobs, particularly in the manufacturing sector (totaling 7.7 million in 2050).