OPINION: 'Scenarios published by major oil companies are unlikely to keep Earth’s temperature from rising to very dangerous levels, our analysis finds.'
Several major oil BRN00, -0.06% companies, including BP BP, +1.15% and Shell SHEL, +0.46%, periodically publish scenarios forecasting the future of the energy sector. In recent years, they have added visions for how climate change might be addressed, including scenarios that they claim are consistent with the international Paris climate agreement.
What the Paris Agreement expects The 2015 Paris Agreement, signed by nearly all countries, sets out a few criteria to meet its objectives. How the scenarios perform We have been working with the nonprofit science and policy research institute Climate Analytics to better understand the implications of the Paris Agreement for global and national decarbonization pathways—the paths countries can take to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions. In particular, we have explored the roles that coal MTFC00, +0.70% and natural gas NG00, +0.53% can play as the world transitions away from fossil fuels.
Of the six scenarios, we determined that only the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero by 2050 scenario sketches out an energy future that is compatible with the 1.5°C Paris Agreement goal. Our method uses a transparent procedure to extend each pathway to 2100 and estimate emissions of other gases, which allows us to calculate the temperature outcomes of these scenarios using simple climate models.
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