Lisa Friedman, E&E reporter | Link to article
Holding back catastrophic climate change is still possible — but just barely, and doing so will require a tremendous technological effort, according to a sweeping new report that analyzes what it would take to de-carbonize the world’s top economies.
Led by Columbia University’s Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs, the study builds on research showing the world is badly off-track to meet its international pledge of limiting the mean global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius by 2050. In fact, it found that few governments have even studied how to achieve that goal.
The good news: It can be done. But, researchers from 15 countries warned, doing so will mean achieving worldwide carbon neutrality by the second half of this century. And that, they said, will require a “profound transformation” of energy systems as well as a heavy dependence on technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS) that are still a long way off from large-scale deployment.
Time, meanwhile, is running short. (complete article)