I was fortunate to be in Brazil recently and as part of the trip I visited the offices of Carbonext1 in São Paulo, one of the leading companies in the voluntary carbon market space, in this case currently focused on avoided deforestation projects. They are engaged in projects that, in total, are conserving between 1.5 and 2 million hectares of Amazon rainforest. The rainforest itself covers an area of some 670 million hectares, but much of this land isn’t necessarily under immediate threat. Rather, the strategic focus of the company is along the southern border of the rainforest, in effect cre ..read more

On February 6th the European Commission published its Communication and Impact Assessment (IA) for a 2040 Climate Target for the EU, recommending a net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target of 90% against a 1990 baseline. According to the IA, this means less than 850 MtCO2-eq of GHG emissions remaining in 2040. Scenario analysis provides a useful mechanism for looking at such future goals, so this discussion is in part framed around the EU data in our two Energy Security Scenario stories, Archipelagos and Sky 2050. These are stories that are full of technology and innovation, with rapid c ..read more

From the perspective of the UAE Consensus and the progress made on Loss and Damage, the COP process is very much alive and the UAE Presidency should be congratulated on all that they managed to achieve. But if you are a keen follower of progress on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, a vibrant living and developing process was hard to see. In this post, my colleague Malek Al-Chalabi discusses COP 28 from the perspective of the Article 6 negotiations. Malek co-Chairs the International Working Group within the International Emissions Trading Association and is the Senior Carbon Pricing Policy Advi ..read more

I recently attended an emission trading conference in Paris and like many such events in the EU now, one of the first items on the agenda (and in this case it was the first) was a presentation and discussion on the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The fact that the IRA isn’t an emissions trading system didn’t matter. The IRA has upended the climate discussion in the EU in that projects are happening in the US, and change is underway, while a key green technology sector like the EU wind industry is facing headwinds. After years of attempting to implement carbon pricing but finding it to be pol ..read more

Many years ago the well know economist Milton Friedman made a short film about pencils that continues to resonate today. While the film can be interpreted as simply a defence for capitalism, which Friedman was famous for defending, it nevertheless does make a good point about the complexity of the world we live in. The manufacture of an item as simple as a pencil requires such a wide range of resources, skills, machines and knowledge that no one person could easily craft a pencil as refined as the product we can buy for not very much money in a local shop or online. The steps to make a pencil ..read more

A guest post by my scenario team colleagues Thomas Akkerhuis and Georgios Bonias In a few days, leaders from the world’s largest economies will gather in India for the 2023 G20 summit. The G20 Presidency has included Green Development as one of the main themes of the summit with a specific mention on ‘ensuring just energy transitions for developing countries’. At the same time, given the volatility and uncertainty in energy markets, many countries are looking to secure their own energy sources, with fossil fuel extraction as part of plan. Looking forwards, how might the emerging and least deve ..read more

For the people in a scenario team, it’s always exciting when something that you have discussed in your work suddenly starts to appear. It’s even more exciting when it happens in the company that you work for. So it is with direct air capture (DAC).   Last week Shell announced it has taken the decision to build a DAC industrial-scale demonstration unit at the Shell Technology Center Houston (STCH), in the USA. With a targeted start-up in 2025, the company aims to prove the technical viability of its in-house developed solid sorbent technology. Shell’s Direct Air Capture technology discuss ..read more

One of the features of an upcoming COP is that the months prior often bring with them a slew of proposals for new global targets and initiatives. This year is no different, perhaps also driven by the extreme heat and precipitation that has been challenging the Northern Hemisphere. In July, COP 28 President, Dr. Sultan al-Jaber, put forward a proposed COP28 action plan in a letter to the Parties. Along with a number of calls for increasingly rapid transformation and improved financing for developing countries, the plan includes the following three specific energy system targets which were also ..read more

Over the last 10 days I have been travelling by ship up and down the west coast of Greenland, enjoying the spectacular sights this country has to offer and getting a taste of the long history of human settlement in the region from the excellent museums that have been established in various towns. Perhaps more than any other place I have visited, the human presence in Greenland appears to have been shaped by climate change; not the anthropogenic changes currently underway, but the natural changes that have occurred over the last 10,000 years. The original spread of humans form Africa was some 2 ..read more

A guest post by my scenarios team colleague Richard Baker –  Senior Energy Adviser There is widespread consensus that a marked decline in the use of all oil and gas over the coming decades is required if the world is to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord. Any discussion of technology that is perceived as prolonging investment in their usage is invariably greeted with condemnation. Recently, in the run-up to COP28 in the UAE, the  incoming COP President, Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, was criticized in some sections of the media for stating that the world needs to focus on tackling em ..read more