The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations The objective of the IPCC is to provide governments with scientific information they can use to develop climate policies. IPCC reports provide summaries of what is known to date about the drivers, impacts and risks associated with climate change, and how adaptation and mitigation can reduce those risks. Unfortunately, these reports are written in a highly technical style appropriate for specialists and are not an easy read for the rest of us. In other words, the IPCC reports can be a real slog to get through. The IPCC really should release parallel reports for the layperson. In lieu of that, I will occasionally post bits and pieces of reports that I’ve found especially interesting or useful.
This series of posts is based on the 2018 IPCC report, “Mitigation pathways compatible with 1.5°C in the context of sustainable development” - specifically, a multi-page table listing 70 measures that have been represented in the mitigation pathway literature. First some definitions, care of the IPCC glossary:
1.5°C: Refers to goal of limiting the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels.
Mitigation (of climate change): A human intervention to reduce emissions or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases.
Sink: A reservoir (natural or human, in soil, ocean, and plants) where a greenhouse gas, an aerosol or a precursor of a greenhouse gas is stored.
Mitigation pathway: A temporal evolution of a set of mitigation scenario features, such as greenhouse gas emissions and socio-economic development. That IPCC definition is rather obscure to me. Here’s an alternative: Pathways are a series of actions over time. Climate change mitigation pathways are a series of measures taken to reduce or prevent greenhouse gas emissions or to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (Lawrence and Haasnoot, 2017).
Demand-side measures: Policies and programs for influencing the demand for goods and/or services.
Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS): A process in which a relatively pure stream of carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial and energy-related sources is separated (captured), conditioned, compressed and transported to a storage location for long-term isolation from the atmosphere.
Urban Form: The physical patterns, layouts, and structures that make up an urban center. (This definition is from the UK government, as it was not in the IPCC glossary).
Without further ado, here are 17 demand-side measures found in the 2018 IPCC report:
Source: Table 2.SM.6 (Section)/2018: Mitigation Pathways Compatible with 1.5°C in the Context of Sustainable Development Supplementary Material. In: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15 Accessed February 8, 2020
Note that I’m not endorsing some measures over others. None of the above measures are mature technologies (meaning the path to optimality is strewn with knowledge gaps) and none should be excluded from consideration. As energy systems engineer and Princeton professor Jesse Jenkins put it:
“If we’re really in a ‘climate crisis,’ then you go to war with your full arsenal, you don’t hold anything back. And you don’t purposefully make this crisis harder by limiting our already limited options.”
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Next: Decarbonisation Measures (spelled the British way, because that’s how the IPCC does it)
References:
Forster, P., D. Huppmann, E. Kriegler, L. Mundaca, C. Smith, J. Rogelj, and R. Seferian, 2018: Mitigation Pathways Compatible with 1.5°C in the Context of Sustainable Development Supplementary Material. In: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O. Portner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Pean, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, and T. Waterfield (eds.)]. Available from https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15
Lawrence, J. and M. Haasnoot (2017). "What it took to catalyse uptake of dynamic adaptive pathways planning to address climate change uncertainty." Environmental Science & Policy 68: 47-57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2016.12.003
Rogelj, J., D. Shindell, K. Jiang, S. Fifita, P. Forster, V. Ginzburg, C. Handa, H. Kheshgi, S. Kobayashi, E. Kriegler, L. Mundaca, R. Séférian, and M.V. Vilariño, 2018: Mitigation Pathways Compatible with 1.5°C in the Context of Sustainable Development. In: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, and T. Waterfield (eds.)]. In Press. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-2/