Glen Peters
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glenpeters.bsky.social
Glen Peters
@glenpeters.bsky.social

Energy, emissions, & climate
CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Oslo, Norway
https://cicero.oslo.no/en/employees/glen-peters

Glen Vecchione is an American composer, lyricist, poet, and writer. With David Dusing he co-authored the music and lyrics to the musical The Legend of Frankie and Johnny. He is the author and illustrator of several non-fiction books for children and young adults; many of them written on science related topics or on children's games. He has also published poetry for adults in several literary journals. Under the pseudonym Glen Peters he wrote the novel Where the Nights Smell Like Bread. .. more

Environmental science 41%
Economics 22%
Pinned
📢Global Carbon Budget 2025📢

Fossil CO2 emissions continue to rise in 2025 while the terrestrial carbon sink recovers to pre-El Niño strength.

The key findings are covered in two reports this year:
* ESSDD (preprint): essd.copernicus.org/preprints/es...
* Nature: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/

I am not going to disagree with any of that. I just think the E/GDP story in the last decade is potentially an interesting and overlooked one. All the focus is on renewables deployment, but there are probably many interesting stories that aggregate to give the E/GDP trends.

BTW, is your growth rate (-0.3%) leap year adjusted?

Sure, the data is what it is. If you did a plot from 2010 to 2016 it would look like emissions peaked. When you zoom in, your narrative makes perfect sense. When you zoom out, one would be more cautious. Forest & trees sort of thing.

If you were in to betting, you would bet on a peak.

I wish I published this (from 2017) in Science or something, not as a blog post: "We are really bad at predicting Chinese emissions. Why do we think we know what happens next?"
www.climatechangenews.com/2017/03/31/c...
Have Chinese CO2 emissions really peaked?
We are really bad at predicting Chinese emissions. Why do we think we know what happens next?
www.climatechangenews.com

If E/GDP returned to historical rates of change, emissions would decline at a few % (even 5%) per year. I don't think anyone is predicting that? (that would not be a renewables story though). If we don't understand what is causing E/GDP to slow, then how can we predict its evolution?

It would be interesting to understand why E/GDP changes were so bad since 2015. Is it because electricity use was growing so fast, was there some sliding on structural change (shift to services slowed, or shift back to primary / secondary), etc.

Looking at the Kaya Decomposition is sort of interesting. There is not a huge change (acceleration) in CO2/E. This would imply renewables are just maintaining the historical rate of change. Which is sort of depressing.

Yeah, I guess the New Normal never happened en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_nor....

My colleague @jikorsbakken.bsky.social puts the 2015-2020 growth down to construction & 2020-2025 down to advanced manufacturing (which is more electricity intensive). So, what will it be 2025-2030?
en.wikipedia.org

Norway has not weakened its NDC, for example.

Well, that is a pretty lame target. It is based on offsets. They would be better to reduce their emissions.

I think the climate story of the century is why China did not peak in 2015-2016. In the last 10 years or so, the improvements in Energy per GDP have basically stopped. Structurally, one would have expected the peak in 2015-2016. Who predicted the lack of change in E/GDP?

Well, there were a bunch of papers analysing the amazing progress in policy for the 1998 dip. And there were the papers on the 2016 dip, "war on coal", the "new normal", even discussing the rapid growth of renewables, etc. But I guess this time is different. Third time lucky!

“when everyone had a 2030 target, [there was] much more focus from customers to have this market up and running very fast”.

But who is dropping their 2030 targets? Who has weakened them? I guess the USA, ok, but how does US relate to Equinor & CCS?

EU targets are only getting stronger...
Who could have seen this coming?

Carbon capture was never the plan, it was the comfort blanket: “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it later".

A story to delay real cuts while drilling rolls on.

When the industry feels powerful & secure, the fairy tale goes back on the shelf.
Equinor pulling back CCS spending until market improves
Norwegian company is a CCS pioneer but markets are developing slower than expected
www.upstreamonline.com
Who could have seen this coming?

Carbon capture was never the plan, it was the comfort blanket: “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it later".

A story to delay real cuts while drilling rolls on.

When the industry feels powerful & secure, the fairy tale goes back on the shelf.
Equinor pulling back CCS spending until market improves
Norwegian company is a CCS pioneer but markets are developing slower than expected
www.upstreamonline.com

Reposted by Glen P. Peters

New episode of with @glenpeters.bsky.social on the following topics @cicero.oslo.no
Global warming & climate change progress
1.5°C vs 3°C warming scenarios
Net-zero emissions and climate targets
Global emissions & peak emissions
IPCC climate projections
Fossil fuels in 2050
youtu.be/xfvA8_N1xqk?...
Is Net Zero REALLY a Scam I The Truth About Net Zero I Global Climate Targets I Global Warming
YouTube video by Science Talk
youtu.be

The RCB is defined as the cumulative CO2 emissions from the start date (1/1/2024) to the year of net zero CO2 emissions, assuming consistent reductions in non-CO2 emissions.

It is not defined as holding emissions constant.

The Remaining Carbon Budget (RCB) varies with different temperature levels & probabilities, based on Forster et al 2025 (calculation via @robinlamboll.bsky.social).

Though, the variation in the RCB due to non-CO2 emissions spans 1.5°C-1.7°C & many likelihoods.

essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...

Reposted by Glen P. Peters

India's solar is making a solid contribution to daily generation, even in the middle of winter.
(In fact the insolation minimum is during the monsoon season.)

Reposted by Glen P. Peters

No surprises there!
Lowest monthly car sales for decades in Norway after a sharp rise in sales tax on EVs came into effect with the new year. Total 2218 new passenger cars registered in January, of which 94% were BEV.

There was an interview where Bezos said the quiet part out aloud, something like "we are trying to make AI too big to fail, to ensure there will not be a market crash". I guess everyone is in on the conspiracy...

The thing about this video by @climateadam.bsky.social is that the mainstream media & commentariat does not pick up on any of the crap pushed about AI (well, rarely).

Some of the AI claims are rather easy to debunk, but for some reason no one wants to... www.youtube.com/watch?v=py0X...
Climate Scientist Reacts to AI Overlords
YouTube video by ClimateAdam
www.youtube.com

People that manage development budgets do sometimes ask about the emissions effect of their budgets. But I think that is somewhat driven by a push higher up to justify their budgets.

Well, on the Moss post, "In some policy circles". Sure. "some" must be very small. I don't think most serious policy people are that dense, nor climate scientists. Maybe the problem lies in the comms depts.

On the "disproportionately burdening poorer households". But that is a policy choice. There are easy policy solutions to that. More interesting is why government choose not to implement them.

Broadly speaking, my chapter would look at emission trends and the potential role of policy. The degree we go into GDP growth is a discussion point. Other chapters will dig into details.

The first order draft will be due late 2026, literature cut off for acceptance around start 2028, but we need preferably during 2026 to know what is coming. There is some ambiguity what fits in my chapter (trends) vs the policy chapter, or sector chapters.

I just want to emphasise this point above. If you have literature, demonstrating negative effects of existing climate policies, it is very useful for the IPCC work. But, also, literature that shows neutral or positive effects of climate policy are useful. (for me, specifically on mitigation)

On the 4, 5, 6. I would characterise that 99% of climate scientists are the plane vanilla IPCC consensus types in their area of expertise. Some may have opinions outside of their expertise. What someone says on TV does not necessarily correlate with all climate scientists views.

The tension is manufactured, also with @thehonestbroker.bsky.social's post. By and large, climate policy in the developed world is not limiting growth in developing countries. Other policies would far outweigh that. Climate policy, as of now, is probably a benefit through cheap solar, etc