Is keeping global warming below 1.5C now out of reach?

The ability of some governments to roll out climate policies could push the world over the Paris Agreement limit.

The Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is no longer possible, a new study claims.
While the rollout of green tech solutions has sped up in recent years, the realistic constraints of implementing climate policies in some countries could make this totemic climate goal impossible.
“Limiting peak temperature to below 1.5°C is not possible with even moderate likelihood anymore,” says lead author of the study Christoph Bertram, associate research professor at the University of Maryland and guest researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
In a new study, published in Nature Climate Change, Bertram and his colleagues ran a series of models that took into account limitations like effective policymaking and regulation.
The most ambitious climate mitigation projections give the world a 50 per cent chance of limiting global warming below 1.6°C above pre-industrial temperatures.
But, if you add in these realistic constraints – such as governments’ capacity to implement policies like carbon taxes – that likelihood drops to between 5 and 45 per cent.
“The world needs to be prepared for the possibility of an overshoot of the 1.5°C limit by at least one and probably multiple tenths of a degree even under the highest possible ambition,” the study reads.
Given the most recent surge in the deployment of various low-carbon technologies from solar and wind to electric vehicles, Bertram says technological constraints are no longer limiting us.
“In North America, Europe and China, given the recent successes of clean energy deployment, there is large scope for substantial acceleration of emission reductions, if the right policies are put in place.”
He adds that the main area where governments are currently lacking is setting ambitious climate targets and implementing proportionate policies. This has already been proven by a lot of previous research.
What this study seeks to show instead is the impact of countries which lack the regulatory capacity to implement effective climate policies on the lowest peak warming still possible.
Some countries simply don’t have the infrastructure or bureaucratic systems to effectively enforce policies like carbon pricing. This reduces their ability to rapidly decarbonise.
The team found that these limitations have a substantial effect on whether or not we can reach global climate goals.
“Other regions, especially those with lower incomes are often lacking institutional capacities for effective decarbonisation policies,” Bertram says.
“In order to support faster decarbonisation in these regions, international support to increase institutional capacities and to make deployment of clean technologies cheaper and easier for these countries is needed.”
Even limiting warming to 1.6°C will require huge political will from higher-income countries.
The EU’s first task, for example, should be accelerating its green transition. While member states are doing well in reducing emissions from the power sector, more ambition is needed in transport, buildings and industry.
Being a frontrunner in technologies like heat pumps or electric vehicles helps to further bring down costs and makes it easier for other countries to deploy them. The EU can also help build out institutions that would enable faster decarbonisation elsewhere, Bertram adds.