'Action deficit' putting 1.5 C goal at risk, climate experts say

A misleading narrative about overcapacity in renewable energy is creating man-made barriers to scaling up the clean power needed to limit global warming to 1.5 C, according to experts speaking at a United Nations climate change gathering in Belem, Brazil.

Breaking that misconception requires redefining climate benefits to include the economic gains of new industrial growth, not merely the damages avoided, said Zhang Yongsheng, director of the Research Institute for Eco-civilization at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He spoke on Monday at an event held on the sidelines of the annual UN climate conference, themed Net-Zero Emission Transition Led by Global Green Actions.

The world is "drastically off track" to meet the 1.5 C target, Zhang said, citing multiple sources, including the latest assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to keep global temperature rise this century below 2 C while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 C, a threshold scientists increasingly say is essential to avoid severe impacts.

Zhang pointed to a widening "action deficit" that is putting the 1.5 C goal in jeopardy. Even if all countries fulfill their current Nationally Determined Contributions, the world is still on course for warming of more than 2 C, he said.

"The solution is already here," Zhang added. Citing data from the International Renewable Energy Agency, he said solar and wind power are now the most affordable sources of new electricity in much of the world. In 2024 alone, renewable power avoided nearly $500 billion in fossil fuel costs globally, he said, calling renewables a tool that "fights climate change and saves money".

Yet the world is installing only about one-third of the renewable capacity needed each year to reach net-zero emissions, with only about half of the existing production capacity being used. What prevents the rapid expansion of cheap, effective technology is "fundamentally economic, not technological", Zhang said.

Because global production capacity now far exceeds actual market demand, some observers have drawn the "misleading conclusion" that there is global overcapacity in new energy, he said. He argued the misconception stems from the conventional way countries calculate climate benefits when setting their NDCs.

Under that approach, the benefits of mitigation are defined narrowly as damages avoided, overlooking the economic boost generated by new industries, he said. "For instance, jumping from fossil fuels to renewables and from gas vehicles to EVs. It drives growth. It doesn't hinder it."

Zhang said that flawed logic leads some economic models to suggest that the "optimal" level of warming is around 3 C. "Conventional climate economics and climate science are on two parallel tracks that never meet. We must bring them together in a new paradigm," he said.

The approach "defies conventional thinking", he added. Strict rules on fuel-powered vehicles, for example, can spur an electric vehicle boom and cut emissions, while a lack of pressure locks in high-emitting systems.

Zhang's view was endorsed by Albert Park, chief economist of the Asian Development Bank. Many models assessing climate action "overestimate costs and underestimate benefits", Park said. He noted that his team's findings imply about a 41 percent potential GDP loss in the Asia-Pacific region by 2100 under a high-emissions scenario.

"So we keep updating these estimates using the most recent economic damage models to consistently emphasize the urgency and the economic rationale for action," he said.

Harald Winkler, an economics professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, said the cost of capital is a major barrier to renewable deployment in much of the world. Even where the levelized cost of renewable energy is lower, a capital-poor nation may find it easier to build cheaper coal plants and delay fuel costs, he said.

Zhang argued that climate action is a "self-fulfilling process". "No action, no green evidence," he said. "Strong, ambitious action creates huge markets, drives innovation and lowers costs further. In the new paradigm, the harder you try, the cheaper it gets — the exact opposite of the conventional economic wisdom on climate."

houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn