The Great Decarbonization ― How Climate Reshaped Energy

Last time, we watched the energy of wind and light grow from a dream into a real, cost-competitive option. As technology grew cheaper and governments backed it with policy, renewable energy began to move from the margins of the power supply toward its center.

But the force that pushed that surge forward on a global scale was not technology or economics alone. There was another challenge, one pressed upon us by the Earth itself: climate change ― the problem that greenhouse gases, building up in the atmosphere, were warming the planet. In this chapter we will look at how that science changed the way we choose our energy, and how humanity came to attempt a graduation from fossil fuels after three centuries in the lead role ― examining both the ideal and the difficulty.

The Earth Is Warming ― What the Science Showed

Beginning with coal and spreading to oil and natural gas, the burning of fossil fuels brought us an enormous supply of power. Yet it was also a practice that released vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This gas makes it harder for heat to escape from the surface and pushes up the planet’s average temperature ― the so-called greenhouse effect, which came to be seriously questioned from the latter half of the twentieth century onward.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which brings together scientists from many countries, has compiled its assessments through repeated observation and research. The Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021, went so far as to state that it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land, according to reports. The human-caused temperature rise compared with the pre-industrial era was put at roughly 1.1 degrees in the 2010s. It may look like a small figure, but as an average for the entire planet, it is a large change.

As heat waves, torrential rains, and rising seas were reported in place after place, how we make and use energy ceased to be merely an economic question. It became a question bound up with the very shape of the Earth to come.

From Kyoto to Paris ― Until the World Exchanged Promises

A planet-wide challenge like the climate cannot be met by the effort of any single nation. And so agreements that crossed borders were sought.

The first great step was the Kyoto Protocol, adopted at a conference held in Kyoto in 1997. For several greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, it set out the first international promise under which developed nations would take up reductions toward numerical targets. The obligation to reduce, however, fell mainly on developed nations, while the emerging economies that were rapidly increasing their emissions were left outside its scope. The limits of this framework would in time give rise to calls for revision.

Then, in 2015, the Paris Agreement was reached at a conference held in Paris. Carrying on from the Kyoto Protocol, it changed its character greatly. Nearly all nations took part, developing as well as developed, and set as a shared goal holding the rise in the world’s average temperature to well below two degrees above the pre-industrial level, and if possible to 1.5 degrees. A method was adopted in which each nation sets and brings forward its own reduction target, placing weight on each nation’s initiative rather than on compulsion. While debate over its effectiveness remained, it is regarded as a landmark agreement in that the world tried to face the same direction.

The Goal of Carbon Neutrality ― Between the Ideal and the Real

With the Paris Agreement as a turning point, one phrase came to be widely spoken among nations and companies: ‘carbon neutrality’ ― the idea of subtracting the amount absorbed by forests and the like from the amount of greenhouse gases emitted, so as to reach effectively zero. Many nations set a target of around 2050.

This goal demands a fundamental shift in the shape of energy: moving power generation from fossil fuels to renewables and nuclear, replacing gasoline cars with electric vehicles (EVs), and advancing ‘electrification’ across many scenes of industry and daily life. In Europe, China, and elsewhere, it is reported that policies to halt new sales of gasoline cars in the 2030s were announced one after another. It was a grand attempt to remake the very machinery of a society that had relied on fossil fuels.

At COP28, held in 2023, it was reported that a transition away from fossil fuels was set out in an outcome document for the first time. At the same time, it was also reported that fierce negotiation was exchanged over the wording ― whether it should be ‘phase-out’ or ‘phase-down.’ Even as the world agreed on the direction of decarbonization, on its stride and its path it was not of one piece ― such a reality seeped through this negotiation.

Graduating from a Three-Century Lead Role ― The Meaning of the Great Shift

Ever since coal turned the wheels of the Industrial Revolution and oil drove the civilization of the twentieth century, fossil fuels remained humanity’s lead role for some three hundred years. Decarbonization is nothing other than the endeavor to attempt a graduation from that lead role. It can be called a turn in the history of energy as great as the use of fire or the discovery of electricity.

That said, while past shifts advanced in pursuit of ‘more convenient, more powerful force,’ this shift is a little different in character. Fossil fuels are still cheap, easy to handle, and powerful. To deliberately let them go is not for convenience, but for a value not easily seen at once: the future of the Earth. For that very reason, it asks of society a difficult judgment ― how to weigh short-term burdens against long-term benefits.

Look at the side of light, and the spread of renewable energy gives rise to new industries and jobs, and is opening a road to self-sufficiency for nations that have relied on imports for their energy. Look at the side of shadow, and a sudden shift may invite rising electricity prices and unstable supply, and it has been pointed out that the burden may fall unevenly on the more vulnerable people and industries. Look at only one side, and you misjudge ― the light and shadow of energy that this series has watched again and again appears here once more.

Humanity is now trying, by its own will, to switch over the very force that has sustained its prosperity. It is an unprecedented challenge, and still only half the road has been traveled. In what form the graduation from fossil fuels will bear fruit, or what difficulties it will face ― that answer lies beyond the countless choices the world will go on accumulating. And beyond it waits one more question. After fossil fuels, with just what force will humanity drive the next civilization?