It’s December again and time for another UN Climate Change Conference, COP 25 in Chile. This annual environmental ‘frenzy’ began in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, when 178 member countries of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) entered into a treaty to ‘stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’.
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Some 28 years later, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) is reporting a new record high of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, a trend that may mean “future generations will be confronted with increasingly severe impacts of climate change, including rising temperatures, more extreme weather, water stress, sea level rise and disruption to marine and land ecosystems”.
Global average concentrations breached the 400 ppm benchmark in 2015 and had reached 407.8 ppm by 2018. At the time of the first UNFCCC treaty in 1992, the concentration was at 360 ppm and the aim of the member nations at that summit was to reduce and stabilise at 1990 levels, below 355 ppm.
How distant that target looks now.
Along with a ‘surge’ in concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide, the net effect since 1990 is ‘a 43% increase in total radiative forcing – the warming effect on the climate’, with CO2 concentrations accounting for about 80% of the effect.
“There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline … despite all the commitments under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
In addition, the UN’s Environment Programme (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report describes its findings as “bleak”. Countries have “collectively failed to stop the growth in global GHG emissions, meaning that deeper and faster cuts are now required,” we read in the executive summary.
Paying particular attention to the richest G20 countries responsible for 78% of all emissions, only the EU, the UK, Italy and France have committed to long-term net zero targets. South Africa is one of seven G20 members that “need to take more action to achieve their current promises”. The others? Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the US. And of all of the 175 current signatories to the Paris Accord, only three, China, the EU and Mexico, are set to meet their emission reduction commitments via current environmental policies.
Bleak indeed! For over 28 years, the world has been procrastinating and, while every COP conference finds beacons of success, there seems little hope of a COP 25-inspired turnaround.
From a power perspective, South Africa has been procrastinating for nearly as long about which new-build power options to adopt and when. Nuclear has been on and off, the Medupi and Kusili new-build decisions came late and, in hindsight, now seem to have been on the overambitious edge. Also, in spite of the Department of Energy’s widely acclaimed REIPPP programme, the role of renewables has never sat comfortably with ESKOM, which has long been a reluctant adopter.
With the recent promulgation into law of the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2019 to replace IRP 2010, we see a small shift. We can finally say goodbye to the irrationally inflexible ‘bulk-buy’ of 9.6 GW of nuclear power. It has been replaced by up to 2.5 GW, no sooner than 2030 and implemented at a pace and scale based on affordability. Sense has returned, and sensible nuclear must surely have a long term future.
While coal will remain dominant in the energy mix, according to Gwede Mantashe talking at Africa Oil Week earlier this month: “new investments will be directed towards more efficient coal technologies, including underground coal gasification, and carbon capture and storage”.
Renewables, now assigned the acronym VREs (variable renewable energies), are listed in the energy mix alongside coal as ‘big’ in terms of their planned contribution. VREs, most notably wind and PV solutions, are confirmed as least-cost new-build options in the future energy mix, while also generating the least CO2 and consuming the least water. Sadly, however, current annual build limits on renewables have been retained, pending the finalisation of a ‘just transition plan’.
We now know, based on global and local evidence, that clean renewable energies that pose the least risk to the environment are also cost effective. Why then are we continuing to restrict their deployment?
A CSIR analysis into IRP 2019 also points to the lack of long-term (post 2030) aspirations. Do we not want to become a net zero carbon emitter at some time in our future? Should we not be thinking now of a pathway towards a low/very low carbon economy, even if it is going to take 30 years?
We cannot afford to waste another 28 years before we react to what really is a current emergency.
