How urgent is an “emergency”? The word usually implies that immediate action is needed, but in the two years since the declarations of a climate emergency by many national and local administrations following the 2019 street protests, there has been little effective action. In some countries, e.g. the UK, fossil fuel use has even been encouraged by measures such as further road building. It is all a long way from the “rapid and far-reaching transitions”, taking just a few years, that was envisaged by the IPCC SR15 report of 2018 [1], which sparked the street protests.
We can quantify the urgency of the climate emergency in terms of the residual carbon budget – i.e. how much more CO2 can be dumped into the atmosphere without a major risk of exceeding 1.5°C global warming – and how soon this budget will be used up at current emission rates. It turns out that the UK’s fair share of the global carbon budget will be used up in 3.3 years. The maths are simple, but this timescale of 3.3 years is so far from what is being discussed, even in your editorial, that it is worth explaining the calculations in detail, as follows, so that readers can check for themselves.
The 2021 IPCC AR6 report [2] (Table SPM.2 p38) gives 400 billion tonnes CO2 as the global carbon budget to keep global warming to less than 1.5°C with 67% confidence. This is from the start of 2020. With a world population close to 8 billion, and using an assumption of global equity, this is 50 tonnes per person on the planet as a lifetime limit. The UK’s current CO2 emissions are around 10 tonnes per person per year, according to a WWF report [3] (Figure 21, p46). So the UK’s 50 tonnes per person will be used up in 5 years from January 2020, i.e. in December 2024, which is 3.3 years from now.
This should not come as a surprise to people in the UK since similar calculations were done by the Tyndall Centre after the 2018 SR15 report, and are readily available for each UK local authority [4]. These typically give a fair share of the global carbon budget as running out in 7 years from 2020 at current emission rates – the period is 7 rather than 5 years since the local authority data provided by BEIS is incomplete in not including emissions that are embedded in imports. Despite being so readily available, these reports have been almost completely ignored.
Why is the need for radical change (emission cuts of double digit percentages per year) not common knowledge? Firstly, the UK Government promotes its Net Zero 2050 plan [5] as a satisfactory solution, but the Government is not being sufficiently transparent that emissions from aviation, shipping and imports are excluded, or about the implications of the commitment to global equity, or about the feasibility of the implied technological solutions. Many commentators repeat the Government’s claims without challenge, but youth climate activists see through them and are speaking up about the deceits [6][7]. Secondly, for various reasons, many climate scientists and many NGOs are self-censoring about the size and urgency of the changes needed [8] – it is easier to campaign against the expansion of a particular airport than to explain the blunt truth that any leisure flying using fossil fuels is incompatible with a lifetime personal carbon budget of 50 tonnes CO2, since a reliable food supply and keeping warm are much higher priorities.
Yet another COP may help, but what is really needed is for everyone to tell the truth about the climate emergency so that it is treated as an emergency, and to call out misinformation and deceits whoever makes them (however uncomfortable that is), as is advocated by Scientists for Global Responsibility in their Science Oath [9]. It is clear that we cannot rely on governments to take the right decisions by themselves, however much they are urged to. It is up to citizens to be much more involved in policy making, and health professionals with their independence and their experience in making and explaining tough choices are well placed to make a major contribution to this.
As the world recovers from the pandemic, Dr Lucy Gillam, Transport and Environment, looks at the steps that need to be taken to prevent the aviation sector returning to pre-COVID pollution levels.
Article from Responsible Science journal, no.3: online publication: 6 September 2021
Our current crisis presents an opportunity for rapid transition of the aviation industry in two different ways. One is through attaching conditions to bailouts, because the aviation industry is holding out its hand due to the financial crisis it faces. The other way is by mobilising people in institutions and corporations to make lasting changes to travel policy, which fits in very well with the pledge people make in SGR’s Science Oath for Climate.
Pre-2020, aviation growth was very high. In the EU, annual growth stood at around 5.9%, with a 26.3% increase over 5 years. Whereas other sectors within the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) have been cutting their carbon, aviation has been on a very steep upward curve. Globally, the annual carbon emissions of international aviation are already about 70% higher than 2005.
The aviation sector can be decarbonised, but it will require huge investment. The main way that it is possible to decarbonise aviation is through the scaling up of, and switching to, renewable fuels. New aircraft designs have a role, but they will take a fairly long time to have any impact on emissions. Meanwhile, alternative synthetic fuels require huge amounts of renewable energy. So, the challenge of decarbonising aviation becomes much greater if the sector is allowed to continue to grow at pre-2020 rates. Also, the non-CO2 impacts that planes have, such as aviation contrails, are not easily solved even with synthetic renewable fuels. For these reasons, we need additional measures to curb demand.
In the past, aviation growth has been the result of cheap tickets, indirect subsidies to the sector, and aggressive marketing campaigns that have all enabled flight prices to fall significantly compared to their levels 20 years ago.
Due to the pandemic, the airline industry is facing the worst crisis in its short history. Aviation has been seeking government bailouts from the public purse, and this is despite the fact that the industry has avoided contributing to that purse through tax exemptions.
Over €33 billion has been given in aid to airlines in Europe (at the time of writing) and they are looking for further bailouts. To put that into perspective, the industry also avoids charges of around €24 billion per year, just in untaxed kerosene alone. So, it is a critical time for the aviation industry when key decisions can be made about the structure and the financing of the sector. This will have consequences for the coming decades. In addition, in the next 30 years we need to tackle the climate crisis, and we’ve got to think about how we are going transition the sector to zero emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. We also have to think about a just and fair transition for workers. Currently, there is very real suffering for workers in the aviation industry with 5.6 million jobs lost in Europe in aviation in relation to COVID-19 alone.
We need to be sensitive when talking about the need for long-term reductions in the aviation industry, and to have realistic solutions for how we can manage the transition fairly. It’s important to think about what limits should be placed on the size of the sector, given the difficulties of scaling up technological improvements, within the timeframes to meet the climate goals. If we don’t have these conversations right now, we’ll see that things very quickly will revert back to business as usual, just as they have done following other recent crises.
Something else to consider, when talking about transition of the industry, is the question of who flies? Even in Europe, flying is not that ‘normal’. In the UK, for example, the top 1% took one in five of all flights abroad. About half of the public don’t fly at all in a given year, and on a global level we can see that ten percent of the global income spectrum is responsible for three quarters of flight emissions. So, when thinking about bailouts, it is really important to question whether we should continue to subsidise the rich so they can fly cheaply.
Another thing to consider is the huge shifts in working and travel patterns that we’ve seen during the COVID-19 crisis. Behaviours shifted very rapidly due to the uptake of online technologies for meetings. We’ve seen a ‘Zoom boom’ and the resistance that used to exist towards this technology before the pandemic has perhaps been overcome. Now, we can think about what we can do to embed these behaviour changes for the long term.
Talking to people about what they expect when they return to work after the COVID-19 crisis, you can see that there has been a shift in attitudes towards home working, recruitment and business travel. It is highly likely that travelling for work will not return to previous levels and I think finance departments might also be looking at some of the recent cost savings and thinking, “well, maybe we can keep these savings and not return to how staff travelled before”.
Business travel does make up a substantial part of the carbon footprint of an organisation.
Work on the carbon footprints of research organisations reveals that that more than 50% of their carbon footprint is down to business travel. Half of those are EU trips so, even though they are a smaller portion of the emissions compared to long-haul flights, because they are within Europe they could be shifted to other modes of transport if, indeed, those journeys are needed at all.
An interesting aspect of tackling the business carbon footprint relates to premium seating business travel. This type of travel leads to higher emissions per person, and makes up about 20% of flights. Three-quarters of an airline’s revenue comes from selling tickets for business purposes, and premium seating is the most lucrative part of this sector. If the behaviour of this market is shifted, it will disproportionately impact on the profitability of the business models of the whole aviation sector.
This could be the thin edge of a wedge that changes the industry, if we consider travel policies within our institutions. For example, guidance could be introduced saying that a train should be taken for journeys of less than a certain timeframe or distance, or questioning whether meetings really need to take place face-to-face, rather than using online conferencing.
2021 is the European Year of Rail, so there is a growing debate around improving intra-EU rail and I’m hoping this will lead to a shift in passengers from air to rail across the continent.
Stay Grounded is a global grassroots network working to reduce aviation, and it runs a campaign to make lasting change and embed new travel norms in business institutions and universities, and empowering student networks to push for change. It produces many resources, available on their website – https://stay-grounded.org/ – and has a nine-step plan for shifting travel policies in institutions for anyone wanting to become an activist within their organisation. One Stay Grounded campaign is called ‘Save people, not planes’. It started in the immediate aftermath of the first lockdown, but I think it is still relevant.
Dr Lucy Gilliam is Aviation and Shipping Campaigner at Transport and Environment, a European NGO based in Brussels, https://www.transportenvironment.org/
This all falls nicely into line with an article published in The Observer, Science:Tech section on 5th September 2021 by Jocelyn Timperley. It is entitled “The six problems aviation must fix to hit net zero”. It starts with the statistics which show a 75% plummeting during 2020 of the numbers of people travelling by air, accompanied with a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. But states that a return to 2019 levels are expected to return by 2023. Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO2 emissions but its global warming effect is greater due to other gases and particulates emitted at high altitudes; these are called “non-CO2 effects”. Timperley’s six areas for action include the following:
The fuel problem – this includes the development of new kinds of fuel, such as biofuels, electrofuel, hydrogen gas. These are unlikely to make a significant impact before 2050.
The non-CO2 problem – these effects vary substantially, due mainly to climate conditions, and are unlikely to be developed in the near future;
The frequent flyer problem – in the UK 15% of the population are responsible for 70% of the flights taken; globally, just 1% of people take 50% of flights and only 2-4% of people fly internationally in a given year. Frequent-flyer-levies have been discussed and are being campaigned for. The Stay Grounded Network lobbies for certain routes to be banned where there is an adequate rail link.
The policy problem – since aviation emissions were not included in the 2015 Paris Agreement, there has been no policy or concerted attempt to reduce aviation emissions. The UN aviation agency ICAO, is developing an international scheme for offsetting and reducing aviation carbon emissions.
The new middle-class problem – the biggest growth in flying in the future is expected to come from the growing middle classes of developing countries, for example Asia and the Pacific, Africa and the Middle East.
The supersonic problem – some companies, such as Boom Supersonic, are pushing ahead in developing aircraft that are even more polluting. Some airline companies are already negotiating deals to acquire such aircraft.
An Opinion Article in September 1st’s Guardian describes the dilemma facing oil producing countries, as the demand for their product reduces due to climate change initiatives being implemented across the world. The article was written, in the run-up to OPEC’s meeting on 3rd September, by Ali Allawi, deputy prime minister and finance minister of Iraq and Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency.
In the Middle East and North African countries, global heating is already a painful reality, with rising temperatures and water shortages. In Iraq, temperature increases are said to be seven times greater than the global average. But moves away from oil consumption is already affecting their economy.
In the past, at IPCCC COP meetings, OPEC countries have lobbied strongly against reducing reliance on oil and other fossil fuels but they now need to change their tune and join the global move to developing renewable sources of energy. The November COP26 meeting in Glasgow will be an opportunity for them to do that. Of the 15 OPEC nations, the six nations in the Middle East own two-thirds of the organization’s total production and reserves, with Saudi Arabia being the de facto leader of the organization.
Morocco (not a member of OPEC) is one country taking the lead by investing in solar power. Solar power in Morocco is enabled by the country having one of the highest rates of solar insolation among other countries— about 3,000 hours per year of sunshine but up to 3,600 hours in the desert. Morocco has launched one of the world’s largest solar energy projects costing an estimated $9 billion. The aim of the project is to create 2,000 megawatts of solar generation capacity by the year 2020. Five solar power stations are to be constructed, including both photovoltaic and concentrated solar power technology. The Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN), a public-private venture, has been established to lead the project. The first plant was commissioned in 2015, and the entire project due to be completed by 2020. Once completed, the solar project will provide 38% of Morocco’s annual electricity generation. Morocco, the only African country to have a power cable link to Europe (2,100 MW ), aims to benefit from the €400bn ($573.8bn) expected to come from the ambitious pan-continental Desertec Industrial Initiative.
The International Energy Agency’s recent global roadmap to net zero by 2050 shows the world’s demand for oil will need to decline from more than 90m barrels a day to less than 25m by 2050. This would result in a 75% plunge in net revenues for oil-producing economies, many of which are dominated by a public sector that relies on oil exports and the revenues they produce.
Most of the OPEC nations could follow the example of Morocco because they have similar climates.
The Guardian article argues that, to meet climate targets and avoid economic collapse, countries such as Iraq need international support in the transition to clean energy. It cites a recent white paper for economic reform, introduced by the Iraqi government, which seeks to fundamentally alter the nature of the Iraqi economy, allowing the private sector to play a larger role.
Context There is under a decade to act to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. To honour the Paris Agreement and to limit the average global temperature rise to well below 2 °C (endeavouring to keep it below 1.5 °C), we must reduce global carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050. Professionals have a duty to protect the public interest and are stepping up to help secure a sustainable future with a sense of urgency.
As professional bodies, our registrants and members look to us to provide strong leadership, providing up-to-date technical & ethical guidance and advocating for their work & that of the wider profession. Many professional bodies have already responded with a high level of ambition through the UN-backed Race to Zero campaign and its partner initiatives like the Pledge to Net Zero. Building on these initiatives, this charter aims to leverage greater collective ambition through interdisciplinary coordination; in particular:
• The need to act now means today’s workforce is critical for a successful transition to a net zero economy. We can ensure they are prepared with up-to-date continuing professional development (CPD) resources; we aim to work together to ensure a holistic approach and develop a common language of sustainability between professions. • The pathways to net zero require the transformation of infrastructures governed by multiple professions. They are also defined by the intersection of the other challenging issues, such as navigating planetary boundaries, environmental protection and social justice. Given our role in protecting the interests of the wider public through our members and leadership, it is up to us to demonstrate up-to-date and evidence- led guidance on these interdisciplinary issues. • Effective climate action often requires policy support or interdisciplinary cooperation. We can most effectively advocate for cooperation by developing a unified voice and by joining ours with the voices of our counterparts, in other professions and other countries.
Commitment In light of these opportunities for action, we pledge to: 1) Chart the path to sustainability for our members, by: a) Developing Climate Action Plans setting out how we will support and enable our members to achieving practice in line with the Paris Agreement and UN Sustainable Development Goals, b) Reporting on our participation and progress towards Action Plan targets publicly each year, c) Sharing resources to ensure the Action Plans are based in current, holistic expertise; 2) Speak with a unified voice to and with professional bodies, government and the public by: a) Creating a professional bodies forum for interdisciplinary learning, cooperation and action, b) Championing the role and representation of professionals in climate action to government, c) Growing our voice by inviting our international counterpart bodies to join us. 3) Empower and inspire our members to drive sustainable growth, by: a) Surveying our members to understand their sustainability resource and training needs, b) Jointly providing a set of common CPD tools and principles, smoothing the development of CPD resources, for each profession, that account for interdisciplinary sustainability issues, c) Making plans and taking rapid action to reduce our emissions in line with 1.5 °C of warming;
The COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis, coupled with the run up to COP26, present us with a once-in-a-generation chance to create a greener, fairer and more prosperous society. We believe that our actions will help lay the foundations for this transformation.
A working group of eight professional institutions developed the Charter after meeting with over 45 professional bodies at London Climate Action Week last year. The ambition is for the majority of the UK’s learned societies and professional organisations to commit to the Charter ahead of COP26 to bring wide-ranging expertise to focus on the climate crisis.
The Charter is already supported by twelve professional bodies representing over 400,000 professionals and a further 300 member organisations.
Early supporters include Engineering UK, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, the Institution of Environmental Sciences, Professional Associations Research Network, Royal Society of Chemistry and Society for the Environment.
The supporters of the Charter maintain that the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis, coupled with the run-up to COP26, present us with a once-in-a-generation chance to create a greener, fairer and more prosperous society.
The Charter seeks three commitments from professional bodies:
Chart the path to sustainability for our members, by developing, reporting on, and sharing resources to create Climate Action Plans to reduce our emissions in line with 1.5 °C of warming.
Speak with a unified voice to and with professional bodies, government, and the public by creating an interdisciplinary professional bodies forum.
Empower and inspire our members to drive sustainable growth, byproviding continuous professional development tools, principles, and resources.
The first results of the Charter will be presented in the Blue Zone at COP26 to demonstrate to international governments the importance of professionals in the transition to a sustainable economy.
For more information on how to sign up to the Charter, images and interview requests, please contact Geraint Northwood on geraint.northwood@e3g.org.
Office of National Statistics estimates 32.5 million people aged 16 years and over are in employment in the UK as of November 2020. 14M Brits represented by professional associations divided by 32.5M = 43% of the population represented by a professional body.
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