A McKinsey report Climate math: What a 1.5-degree pathway would take does not shy away from listing some of the major tasks ahead if we are to decarbonise. This report also comes at a time when Government's are being urged to plan for decarbonisation coming out of the Covid crisis to make sure that countries and economies are structured to operate in the future low carbon world.
Solar will need to increase to eight times todays levels over the next decade and wind deployment by five times todays levels.
Even with this and significant shifts in decarbonizing transport, food production and heating, McKinsey still considers that carbon capture is needed to offset ongoing emissions. We are seeing a great deal of interest around green hydrogen which will undoubtedly play and ever increasing role in our Net Zero strategy in the UK and decarbonisation across the globe but notwithstanding that, carbon capture is also needed for the large scale production of hydrogen at least in the interim, which is something the Climate Change Committee has pointed out.
While it will be the ambitions, targets and technologies that will be talked about and focused on in the coming decade, no one should underestimate the law and regulation that will need be put in place to act as a carrot and stick for change. It will be essential in the development of those laws and the policies behind them, that we look across sectors and individual government department briefs to make sure that new regulations which incentivise action in one area do not unwittingly do the reverse in another.
“Currently, it is impossible to chart a 1.5-degree pathway that does not remove CO2 to offset ongoing emissions. The math simply does not work," the consultancy said in its analysis