There can be all sorts of conversations about the optimal, cost effective way to migrate to a renewable energy future. If this was 2005 or 1995 it would be a relative soda. One could take a longer term approach and wind down fossils fuels in an orderly way while replacing them with clean renewable energy.
But it is too late for that approach in 2018. We need to move immediately to renewable energy to drastically reduce the Greenhouse Gases that are creating runaway global warming. The most recent report from the IPCC points out that time is well and truly up. If we want to (somehow..) keep global warming to 1.5C we have to achieve world wide zero GG emissions by 2050. This is a truly heroic task and trying to do this "cost effectively" now is just imposssible.
The report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching”transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to bebalanced by removing CO2 from the air.
“Limiting warming to 1.5ºC is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would
require unprecedented changes,” said Jim Skea, Co- Chair of IPCC Working Group III.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/session48/pr_181008_P48_spm_en.pdf
Could this be achieved and at what cost ? Theoritically... yes. How? There is a rough estimate in Greg Jerichos article. Not cheap but doable. And when one looks at the consequences of not reining in global warming actually quite a bargain.
Australia's climate idiocracy must end – and there's no time to waste
Greg Jericho
The Liberal party’s biggest con was the idea that reducing emissions could be done without pain and at little cost
@GrogsGamut
Sun 14 Oct 2018 08.00 AEDT Last modified on Sun 14 Oct 2018 10.10 AEDT
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Michael McCormack, Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg, who bragged that ‘emissions on a per capita and GDP basis have come down to their lowest level in 28 years’. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
This week came the news
from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that we are screwed. I wish I could be more optimistic. I wish I could hold out some hope that things are about to improve. But I look at actions by governments around the world, and the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments, and I find the ability to retain a positive outlook smothered in the face of feckless indifference and wilful ignorance.
The IPCC report is not actually, as some would have you think, a prophecy of doom – it is a call for action. Rather than talking of what will happen if the planet warms by 2C above industrial levels, its focus is on how much lower the risks are if we limit it to 1.5C.
And the good news is this can actually be done.
The bad news is we need to do it by 2030 and it is going to cost, on average, about US$2.4tn every year until 2035 – equivalent to 2.5% of the world GDP.
For Australia, that translates to around $46bn – the same amount the government spends on the aged pension. Even if we argue that as we only contribute about 1% of total global emissions we should only contribute 1% of the US$2.4tn cost, we are chipping in $33bn a year in Australian dollars – or equivalent to the combined amount spent this year on the NDIS, Newstart and the childcare subsidy.
Not cheap.
But keeping temperatures at 1.5C reduces the risk of, for example, all of the
Great Barrier Reef dying (we’re still likely to lose 70% to 90%). Our farmers would certainly notice the difference as the reports suggests that biome shifts in Australia (which would see our arid, temperate and tropical regions shift) “would be avoided by constraining warming to 1.5C as compared with 2C”.
In a pure dollars sense, the report notes that “the economic damage in the United States from climate change” is around 1.2% of GDP per 1C increase.
So it is pretty clear that limiting the temperature rise to 1.5C is worth it. The problem is it is harder to achieve. It requires, for example, reducing emissions to zero by 2050 rather than 2075.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...diocracy-must-end-and-theres-no-time-to-waste