Climate and Us | Will the war push world leaders to act on the climate crisis?

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has once again reminded us that we live in an interdependent world. While the war has indeed sent shock waves across the world with fuel prices shooting through the roof, will it be an impetus for the West to embrace clean and renewable energy earlier than planned? It’s difficult to say.

Historian and philosopher, Yuval Noah Harari, recently explained the cascading impacts of the war through an analogy of defence budgets.

In a TED Talks interview last week, he said: “I hope for all of humanity that this war stops immediately because if it doesn’t it’s not only the Ukrainians and Russians that will suffer. Everybody will suffer terribly. Because of the shock waves destabilising the entire world. We have been living in an amazing era of peace in the last few decades and it wasn’t some kind of hippie fantasy. You saw it in the budgets,” he said. Many disagree with Harari’s theory of living in an era of amazing peace because conflict had continued to impact millions of people in south and west Asia, and many parts of Africa.

“In EU [European Union], the average defence budget was around 3% of the government budget. That’s a historical miracle almost. For most of history, the budget of kings and emperors and sultans 50%, 60%, 80% goes to the army. In Europe, it’s only 3%. Globally on an average, it’s around 6%… within a few days Germany doubles its military budget in a day… this is a race to the bottom…when they double their budgets, other countries look and feel insecure about their budgets. So, they have to double them again and triple them,” Harari explained.

Along with the fear of more aggression globally now, another clear fallout of the war is a massive disruption in the energy sector. While Europe has been saying that it is in solidarity with Ukraine and has extended support through humanitarian aid and weapons, it is in a precarious position when it comes to its dependence on Russia for gas.

Russia currently supplies nearly 45% of Europe’s gas imports. The European Commission on March 8 proposed an outline of a plan to make Europe independent from Russian fossil fuels well before 2030, starting with gas.

“Europe has been facing increased energy prices for several months, but now uncertainty on supply is exacerbating the problem. REPowerEU will seek to diversify gas supplies, speed up the roll-out of renewable gases and replace gas in heating and power generation. This can reduce EU demand for Russian gas by two thirds before the end of the year.”

The Commission has proposed to develop a REPowerEU plan that will increase the resilience of the EU-wide energy system by diversifying gas supplies, via higher Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and pipeline imports from non-Russian suppliers; larger volumes of biomethane and renewable hydrogen production and imports; by reducing the use of fossil fuels in homes, buildings, industry, and power system and by boosting energy efficiency, increasing renewables and electrification and so on.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) also presented a 10-point plan for the EU to wean off from Russian gas. The most significant among them is to: Diversify the EU’s gas supply in the near term; Accelerate deployment of new solar and wind power; Increase the share of bioenergy and nuclear energy.

The US announced an immediate ban on the import of Russian oil, LNG, and coal on March 9. The White House described it as a significant act with widespread bipartisan support that will further deprive Russian President Vladimir Putin of the “economic resources he uses to continue his needless war of choice.” Last year, the US imported nearly 700,000 barrels per day of crude oil and refined petroleum products from Russia.

Diversifying gas supplies from non-Russian sources doesn’t necessarily mean moving towards clean energy. It could also mean sourcing gas and oil from other cheaper suppliers. Some news stories on the energy crisis in Europe and US should worry all of us. The Climate Wire carried a story on March 11 which said two coal plants, one in the United Kingdom and another in Germany, have already delayed retirement plans in view of Russia’s Ukraine invasion and more are expected to follow. 

Glenn Rickson, head of European power analysis at S&P Global predicted in the story that European coal generation will average 15 gigawatts in 2022, up from 11GW in 2021 and 8 GW in 2020. Germany’s coal fleet, which has largely operated as a backup source of power in recent years is now likely to run more frequently. There were reports from the US about more permits being granted for shale gas drilling. According to a report in Yahoo News on March 10, the oil and gas industry in the US is sitting on 9,173 approved but unused drilling permits on federal and tribal lands. The promises of moving towards renewable energy can take a swift turn towards cheap and dirty fuels.

The key to achieving all the announcements that the US and EU have made is to recognise that the climate crisis has started wreaking havoc across the world and in a few years its impacts will be catastrophic. It’s the next crisis that will cripple most parts of the world. More than defence budgets, all countries that have announced net-zero emissions goals need to focus their energies —financial and technological, on implementing near term goals that can help achieve their net-zero goals by 2050, 2060 or 2070, as is the case with India.

Even as the US and the EU’s announcements on limiting fossil fuel imports from Russia bring hope, it’s important to remember that global energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 6% in 2021 to 36.3 billion tonnes — their highest ever level — as the world economy rebounded strongly from the Covid-19 crisis according to an IEA analysis released on March 8.

To keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said global net human-caused CO2 emissions would need to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching “net-zero” around 2050. The world is nowhere close to this pathway.

From the climate crisis to air pollution, from questions of the development-environment tradeoffs to India’s voice in international negotiations on the environment, HT’s Jayashree Nandi brings her deep domain knowledge in a weekly column

The views expressed are personal

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