Dear reader,

Welcome to 004 of our newsletter, Demand Change. We are sharing how we, our customers and the economy as a whole is working towards full decarbonization. We'll be covering subjects within carbon accounting, climate policy, climate tech innovation and sustainable finance.

Now or Never

If the growing amount of buzz around climate action is indicative of future success then we have a reason to be optimistic about climate change. However, the data shows a grim state of affairs. This week, the IPCC AR6 WG3 report (Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change) was released and the conclusions are painting an unsurprisingly grim, but not hopeless picture.

According to the report, the 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement is almost certainly gone, although CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal) technologies might be able to bring compensate the overshoot and bring temperatures back around the end of the century. Scientists are rather skeptical about the feasibility of this pathway given the high probability of irreversible changes.

And while the report does acknowledge the important role of CDR for hard-to-abate residual emissions, it highlights the importance of immediate, deep emission reductions. The most important message of the report is well summarized by this quote in The Guardian by one of the authors of the IPCC report:

“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5C. Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible.”

This key figure from the report shows the reduction potential of various sectors and technologies:

This is also confirmed by the IEA's Net Zero by 2050 report from last year, which states that most of the technology (~80%) needed to achieve the 2030 targets is available today. There’s hope, let’s deploy!

Closing with the wise words of The Roots, it's truly "Now or Never":

Everything's changin' around me and I wanna change too It's one thing I know, it ain't cool bein' no fool I feel different today, I don't know what else to say But I'ma get my shit together, it's now or never

Now or never, now or never Now or never, now or never

As always: stay tuned, stay safe, demand change!

- Adam & The Variable Team