Unextractable fossil fuels in a 1.5 °C world (original) (raw)

Nature volume 597, pages 230–234 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement pledged to limit global warming to well below 2 °C and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C relative to pre-industrial times[1](/articles/s41586-021-03821-8#ref-CR1 "Adoption of the Paris Agreement https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf

             (United Nations, 2015)."). However, fossil fuels continue to dominate the global energy system and a sharp decline in their use must be realized to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 °C (refs. [2](#ref-CR2 "The Production Gap Report: 2020 Special Report 
              http://productiongap.org/2020report
              
             (SEI, IISD, ODI, E3G & UNEP, 2020)."),[3](#ref-CR3 "Rogelj, J. et al. in Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C (eds Masson-Delmotte, V. et al.) (IPCC, WMO, 2018)."),[4](#ref-CR4 "Luderer, G. et al. Residual fossil CO2 emissions in 1.5–2 °C pathways. Nat. Clim. Change 8, 626–633 (2018)."),[5](#ref-CR5 "Grubler, A. et al. A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies. Nat. Energy 3, 515–527 (2018)."),[6](#ref-CR6 "Tong, D. et al. Committed emissions from existing energy infrastructure jeopardize 1.5 °C climate target. Nature 572, 373–377 (2019)."),[7](/articles/s41586-021-03821-8#ref-CR7 "Anderson, K. & Peters, G. The trouble with negative emissions. Science 354, 182–183 (2016).")). Here we use a global energy systems model[8](/articles/s41586-021-03821-8#ref-CR8 "Pye, S. et al. An equitable redistribution of unburnable carbon. Nat. Commun. 11, 3968 (2020).") to assess the amount of fossil fuels that would need to be left in the ground, regionally and globally, to allow for a 50 per cent probability of limiting warming to 1.5 °C. By 2050, we find that nearly 60 per cent of oil and fossil methane gas, and 90 per cent of coal must remain unextracted to keep within a 1.5 °C carbon budget. This is a large increase in the unextractable estimates for a 2 °C carbon budget[9](/articles/s41586-021-03821-8#ref-CR9 "McGlade, C. & Ekins, P. The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to 2 °C. Nature 517, 187–190 (2015)."), particularly for oil, for which an additional 25 per cent of reserves must remain unextracted. Furthermore, we estimate that oil and gas production must decline globally by 3 per cent each year until 2050\. This implies that most regions must reach peak production now or during the next decade, rendering many operational and planned fossil fuel projects unviable. We probably present an underestimate of the production changes required, because a greater than 50 per cent probability of limiting warming to 1.5 °C requires more carbon to stay in the ground and because of uncertainties around the timely deployment of negative emission technologies at scale.

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Fig. 1: Unextractable reserves of fossil fuels by region in 2050 and 2100 under a 1.5 °C scenario.

The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.

Fig. 2: Production profiles for regions producing major oil and fossil methane gas for 2020–2050.

The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.

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Article Open access 09 October 2024

Data availability

The results data and key source data in the figures (including in the Supplementary Information) are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5118971. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The underlying code (mathematical equations) for the model is available via GitHub (https://github.com/etsap-TIMES/TIMES_model). The full model database is also available via Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5118971). Given the complexity of the model, further guidance will be provided on model assumptions upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

Change history

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04334-0

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Erickson (SEI), G. Muttitt (IISD) and C. McGlade (IEA) for commenting on a draft version of this paper. This work has been supported by the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and the UK Energy Research Centre Phase 4 (grant numberEP/S029575/1).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London, London, UK
    Dan Welsby & Paul Ekins
  2. UCL Energy Institute, University College London, London, UK
    James Price & Steve Pye

Authors

  1. Dan Welsby
  2. James Price
  3. Steve Pye
  4. Paul Ekins

Contributions

All authors were involved in the design approach to the research. D.W. and J.P. undertook the scenario modelling and analysed the results. All authors contributed to the development of early drafts of the paper, and to writing the final paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence toDan Welsby.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature thanks Dieter Franke, Gang He and Michael Lazarus for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Supply cost curves split by region in TIAM-UCL.

a–c, Curves for oil (a), fossil methane gas (b) and coal (c). Costs are given on an energy-content basis (barrel of oil equivalent for oil, British thermal units for gas and joules for coal), on a US$2005 basis. For oil, different mining processes output different commodities (for example, oil sands mining initially (pre-upgrading) outputs a barrel of bitumen) hence the use of the energy-content cost basis. For gas, associated gas is not included in Extended Data Fig. 1b as it is a by-product of oil production

Source data

Extended Data Table 1 Description of the scenarios explored in this work

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Welsby, D., Price, J., Pye, S. et al. Unextractable fossil fuels in a 1.5 °C world.Nature 597, 230–234 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03821-8

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  1. KB Werks 11 September 2021, 21:54
    Haha, sure i totally believe "scientists" Such a sorry group of subhumans

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