{"id":28862,"date":"2020-07-06T11:15:23","date_gmt":"2020-07-06T15:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/?p=28862"},"modified":"2020-07-06T13:51:30","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T17:51:30","slug":"how-to-accelerate-bending-the-temperature-change-curve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/how-to-accelerate-bending-the-temperature-change-curve\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Accelerate Bending the Temperature Change Curve"},"content":{"rendered":"
>> Back to July 2020 Issue<\/a><\/div>\n

\"Entelligent-logo\"<\/p>\n

Lessons from the Pandemic<\/em><\/h3>\n

The world\u2019s leading climate scientists have warned that we have only a few years left to keep global warming below 1.5\u00b0C, beyond which even half a degree more will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. To help guide policy making and discussion around the world, the IPCC has issued regular reports since 1988 drawing upon carefully constructed scenarios to predict the likely path of greenhouse-gas emissions and the resulting rise in global temperatures. The proposed scenarios must take into account not only complex scientific and environmental factors but also projections of population, economic growth, technology, and government policies.<\/p>\n

For its Fifth Assessment Report, released in 2014, the panel collected a broad and numerous collections of possible scenarios, dubbed \u201crepresentative concentration pathways\u201d (RCPs) and selected four for deeper analysis. The most serious, RCP 8.5, is often called \u201cbusiness-as-usual\u201d because it assumes no changes in government policies. To meet the recommended 1.5\u00b0C target will require emissions not just to stabilize but to decrease significantly. This would require drastic and immediate transformation of our human infrastructure, including how we generate energy and fuel our economy (IEA 2020).<\/p>\n

Whether COVID-19 changes our collective mindset and lowers future emissions trajectories depends on whether it changes the path of the economy and investments in fossil-fuel usage or policy, moving beyond the business-as-usual scenario and introducing new measures such as carbon taxation. To date, reductions (Liu et al 2020) in emissions over the pandemic have yet to produce a perceptible change in concentrations, which are what affect climate as this years\u2019 emissions come on top of century\u2019s accumulated emissions. Though the economic consequences of locking down to quell the spread of the coronavirus will potentially eliminate many companies, it may also thwart the fast expansion of new infrastructure or renewable energy development aimed at reducing resource dependency. One interesting question to address now is how the overall growth trajectory of renewables will be impacted by this pandemic?<\/p>\n

According to managers responding to Pensions & Investments’ annual survey, U.S. institutional energy assets totaled $1.8 billion as of Dec. 31, 2019 down 35.2% from a year earlier and 43% from Dec. 31, 2014. Energy investments have been hit by a double whammy this year that includes falling oil prices with domestic crude prices falling to below zero in April, making renewables less competitive, and a worsening economic outlook due to the global pandemic. At the same time, energy managers are expected to invest more in renewables. Most investors expect that the rollout of renewable energy will continue and even accelerate.<\/p>\n

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