Washington, DC — The release today of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Group III report on mitigating climate change again affirms that the immediate and dramatic reduction of emissions this decade, through the accelerated phaseout of all fossil fuels, is essential to avert catastrophic and irreversible impacts of global warming. Both in its previous reports and in Working Group III’s technical analysis, the IPCC has repeatedly cautioned against over-reliance on speculative technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS) and large-scale carbon dioxide removal, including direct air capture (DAC) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), which are unproven at scale, risky to humans and nature, and may simply not work to reduce emissions or limit temperature rise. Yet, following protracted and politicized negotiations, the Summary for Policymakers of the WGIII report deemphasizes these core scientific messages, leaving the door open to pathways that dangerously overshoot the 1.5°C limit and overwhelmingly rely on technologies that pose grave threats to people and the environment.
In response to the Working Group III report, Nikki Reisch, Climate and Energy Program Director at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), issued the following statement:
“There is no silver bullet for solving the climate emergency, but there is a smoking gun: fossil fuels. The Working Group III report on mitigation affirms that we cannot keep warming below catastrophic levels without first and foremost accelerating the shift away from all fossil fuels, beginning immediately. States may water down the text but they cannot mask this clear scientific reality: Only a rapid and equitable phaseout of fossil fuels, and the transformation of our energy system, can avoid overshooting 1.5°C and the irreparable damage that would follow. Relying on speculative technologies that prolong the use of fossil fuels and purport to deliver emissions reductions or removals in the future, after temperature rise surpasses 1.5°C, will cost lives and inflict further irreversible harm. Carbon capture and storage, for instance, cannot make coal clean, turn gas green, or render oil carbon-free.
“Unfortunately, the mitigation scenarios summarized in this report are constrained by governmental and corporate research budgets that continue to treat economic and political choices as if they were as immutable as physical science. But unlike the incontrovertible physical science of climate change and its accelerating impacts addressed by Working Groups I and II, the economic and policy choices underlying the climate crisis can and must change, because the physical science never will. To prevent further climate catastrophe, states must take the no-overshoot scenarios that offer the only chance of avoiding further irreversible harm as a floor — not a ceiling — for more ambitious climate action. This report shows that such pathways are both technologically feasible and urgently necessary. It’s up to states — and people willing to put political pressure on them — to make these pathways politically and economically possible.”
Linda Schneider, Senior Programme Officer International Climate Policy at Heinrich Böll Stiftung, added:
“The IPCC mitigation report contains much of what is needed to get on track for 1.5°C: Fossil fuel phase-out, wind and solar, widespread electrification, and lowering energy and resource demand, in particular in the Global North, transformations in food systems and diets, protection and restoration of natural ecosystems in line with rights of local communities and Indigenous Peoples. But the IPCC falls short of highlighting the right conclusions from its own findings. The previous two Working Group reports highlighted the severe risks and irreversible damage associated with overshooting the 1.5°C limit and also pointed out the risks and dangers of relying on speculative carbon removal and other geoengineering technologies. But in the SPM of the new report, the central climate mitigation strategy — phasing out all fossil fuels, starting immediately — is often diluted by references to technofixes that are meant to keep the fossil fuel industry alive. Overly vague language on ‘net zero’ emissions thereby obfuscates the most urgent policy responses. One thing is clear: geoengineering technologies will not be able to reverse climate breakdown.”
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Note for editors
Following the Working Group III report release, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and Heinrich Boell Foundation will provide a more in-depth analysis of the report’s contents. The analysis will be available on the CIEL and Henrich Boll websites.
It will build on the organizations’ previous analysis of the Working Group II report, which focused on the findings and significance of overshoot, technologies, and approaches common to those scenarios, and the implications of climate change and responses to it for human rights, Indigenous rights, and social justice.
Last week, an open letter, signed by nearly 400 organizations, including the Center for International Environmental Law, Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth International, Greenpeace, Heinrich Böll Foundation, and the Indigenous Environmental Network, called on governments and IPCC Co-Chairs to ensure the IPCC’s summary of the mitigation science foregrounds rapid fossil fuel phaseout to avoid dangerous temperature overshoot and recognizes that reliance on large-scale Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), carbon markets and carbon offsets, and Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) threatens irreversible harm to people and nature.
Media contact:
Cate Bonacini, press@ciel.org, +1-202-742-5847
Posted on April 4, 2022