HANGZHOU, China, February 19, 2025 — Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) experts will be in Hangzhou, engaging in the 62nd Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the UN body responsible for climate science — from February 24 to 28 and are available for comment.
The IPCC meeting in Hangzhou aims to review the work on key elements of the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) and will be dedicated, among other matters, to the outlines of the Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removals and Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage, as well as overall strategic planning for the new cycle — including the timeline — and the outlines of the three Working Group Reports.
As 2024 marks the warmest year ever recorded, the world ventures further into the uncharted territory of escalating climate breakdown, making the IPCC’s new cycle more critical than ever. The 6th Assessment Cycle Synthesis had unequivocally warned that exceeding 1.5°C warming (“overshoot”) has dangerous and irreversible consequences and confirmed that every fraction of a degree matters to avoid climate “tipping points” and self-reinforcing feedback loops, such as permafrost thawing and the collapse of forest ecosystems.
Yet, instead of prioritizing the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels and ensuring fair mitigation shares, many climate models rely on cost-optimizing approaches and narrow, politically convenient economic assumptions. These models produce scenarios that heavily depend on speculative, high-risk technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere, delaying action and locking in more emissions. These technologies — particularly carbon capture and carbon removal — remain unproven, lack meaningful scale, and pose significant risks and impacts to communities and ecosystems.
In Hangzhou, CIEL and fellow civil society observers will urge governments to ground climate policy pathways in robust climate science, reject flawed economic assumptions, and prioritize global equity and human rights. They will stress the critical need for a fossil fuel phaseout and the abandonment of dangerous and proven-to-fail technologies such as carbon capture, carbon removal, and solar geoengineering. They will also emphasize the importance of incorporating equity and climate justice into its assessment of mitigation pathways during this pivotal assessment cycle.
CIEL Experts in Hangzhou:
- Mary Church — CIEL Geoengineering Campaign Manager: A leading expert on speculative fossil fuel “escape hatches,” including solar and marine geoengineering, and the risks they pose to addressing climate change effectively. Mary will be in Hangzhou from February 22 to March 1st. Follow Mary on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
- Rachel Kennerley — CIEL International Carbon Capture Campaigner: A leading expert on false solutions to the climate crisis, with expertise in technologies such as hydrogen, carbon capture, utilization, and storage, carbon capture and storage, and direct air capture. Rachel will be in Hangzhou from February 22 to March 1st. Follow Rachel on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
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Media Contact
Rossella Recupero, Communications Campaign Specialist: press@ciel.org
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Notes to editors:
The IPCC Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) comprises three Working Group contributions and a Synthesis Report. Working Group I‘s covers the physical science of climate change, Working Group II deals with impacts, adaptation, and vulnerabilities, and Working Group III looks at mitigation of climate change. During this cycle, the IPCC will also produce a Special Report on Climate Change and Cities, and two Methodology Reports on Short-Lived Climate Forcers and Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture Utilization, and Storage.
For more information:
CIEL Reaction to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Synthesis Report
Lost in Translation: Lessons from the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment on the Urgent Transition from Fossil Fuels and the Risks of Misplaced Reliance on False Solutions (March 2023): This joint analysis produced by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, is intended as a metric and counterpoint to weigh the IPCC’s AR6 SYR SPM against the underlying AR6 reports to highlight findings that are essential to understanding the climate actions necessary to prevent and minimize the risk of catastrophic impacts of overshoot, and to design the just and equitable path ahead.’ This analysis builds upon the organizations’ previous examination of the IPCC Working Group II report, Beyond the Limits: New IPCC WG II Report Highlights How Gambling on Overshoot is Pushing the Planet Past a Point of No Return.