In its report published on 4 April, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) points out that emission reduction measures must already be accelerated during the next decade to achieve international targets for limiting climate warming. Greenhouse gas emissions are growing in all sectors, and in the past decade the average GHG emissions were higher than ever before. The pace of growth in emissions has, however, slowed.The technological solutions needed to halve emissions by 2030 already exist.
According to the report, the climate targets announced by different states so far are not enough to limit climate warming to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century. With the climate actions that have been decided so far, climate warming will temporarily exceed the 1.5 degree limit, and strong emission reductions will be needed after 2030 to succeed in limiting the warming to less than 1.5–2 degrees.
The current trends in emissions will lead to a global warming of around three degrees by the end of the century unless fast and effective emission reduction measures are taken over the next two decades.
“Fossil energy has had a major role in causing climate change, and now the energy transformation offers the greatest opportunities to find solutions to climate change. The use of many types of low-emission technologies has become cheaper and they are being introduced faster,” says Antti Arasto, Vice President of VTT's research area Industrial energy and hydrogen.
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