who will pay to save the planet?

The good news first: limiting global warming to 1.5 ° C is possible. “The solutions are available, and many of them are inexpensive”, noted the International Energy Agency (IEA), Thursday, October 13. The bad news, known to all, is that the world is definitely not on the way to get there.

To stay at + 1.5 ° C rise, humanity can still emit in all and for all 325 gigatons of CO2. At the current rate, this “Carbon budget” will be exhausted in eight years. For 2 ° C of warming, it will last about twenty-five years. And that’s all. Beyond that, each additional emission means a more virulent warming.

The big gap between the hoped-for scenario, to which countries around the world pledged during the Paris Agreement in 2015, and reality can largely be explained by one problem: the economy. To achieve carbon neutrality in 2050, as the European Union (EU) promises in particular, we must change the electrical system, turn off coal-fired power stations, put an end to gasoline vehicles, better insulate homes, replace heaters with heaters. heat pumps, inventing new industrial processes for steel and cement… The site is gigantic and expensive.

As COP26 begins on 1er November in Glasgow, Scotland, The world attempts to answer two basic questions: how to finance the ecological transition? And who pays?

“Greening” electricity production

Let’s start by meeting a “Optimistic” – he’s the one who says it. “I think there is a 30% chance of limiting warming to 1.5 ° C”, says Adair Turner, with a big smile. The Briton was, between 2008 and 2012, the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, the state body which advises the British government on its strategy in this area. He has now set up a think tank, the Energy Transitions Commission, which seeks to determine the most credible scenarios for achieving carbon neutrality around the world. His conclusion: “The climate transition by 2050 will have zero impact on living standards or GDP [produit intérieur brut] per inhabitant. “ Clearly, economically, people would not suffer from this transition. “But that does not mean that the transition has no cost”, he corrects immediately.

Explanation. His scenario – there are dozens of relatively similar ones – involves taking the following steps. First we must “Green” electricity production, with wind and solar power (and in its case, nuclear power); then, we have to “electrify” the economy: cars become electric, electric heating is generalized, steel production begins to operate with electric arc furnaces …

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