Emissions to rise by 11% by 2030, says BCG, amid slow progress on decarbonisation goals
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) revealed in its Post-COP27 report that the failure of stakeholders at COP27 to increase ambitions and close the policy gap makes it unlikely to limit global emissions by 45% within now and 2030, rather emissions might rise 11% in the same period.
“Parties failed to increase national ambition (agreed at COP 26) and little was done to close the policy gap. So the goal of limiting global average temperatures to 1.5°C by 2100 remains, but it is very unlikely given emissions must fall 45% by 2030 but are set to rise 11%,” Boston Consulting Group said.
COP27 has been labelled non-progressive on mitigating climate change as campaigners blame the high number of fossil fuel lobbyists that attended the conference. They reportedly claim that these lobbyists, including BP Chief Executive Officer, Bernard Looney, who represented Mauritania as a delegate. BCG Global Head for Sustainable Investing, Vinay Shandal said that while action on climate change has stalled, conversations around climate adaptation were more prevalent at the conference this year than in previous editions.
He said, “For a long time there was a vibe of ‘don’t talk to me about adaptation’ because focusing on adaptation is an implicit acknowledgement that we might actually suffer harm from climate change.
The reality is, especially for developing economies, climate change is already here.” At the current rate of decarbonisation, as determined by national carbon-cutting goals, the average global temperature will rise between 2.2°C and 3.4°C by 2100, exceeding the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to “well below” 2°C.
Climate change’s devastating effects, such as drought, floods, and extreme heat, are already on the rise, making adaptation critical. According to BCG, the world requires $140bn to $300bn in annual climate adaptation investment to finance technologies such as early flood warning systems and drought-resistant crops.
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According to BCG, after contributing only two per cent of total adaptation and resilience financing in 2020, the private sector has significant room to increase investment.
Shandal however said he was hopeful about the future of climate adaptation on his takings from COP27. “There was really great work happening on how do we increase the supply of these projects and structure them and prioritize them, advertise them, present them to investors so that they can put them into their models, make sense of them and actually begin deploying capital.”
Shandal hopes that future COPs will place a greater emphasis on attracting private investors to finance climate adaptation because, as he puts it, there is no policy or economic incentive for investors to support climate adaptation work. The onus is on project creators to persuade investors that their initiative will yield a profit.
“If we can get that unlocked, my optimism for what we can do for communities that will be impacted most by climate change starts to climb precipitously,” he added.
