Equity and Net Zero

Dramatically decreasing greenhouse gas emissions in all economic sectors must occupy our attention immediately. That is work toward a ‘real zero’ goal.   

Yet even if attempts at ‘deep decarbonization’ are successful, some quantity of emissions likely remain: residual emissions. They are implicit in the definition of ‘net zero’. They are the emissions to be ‘netted out’. 

Most climate scientists understand the importance of minimizing the volume of residual emissions at the year 2030, and 2050. Mindful of the concept of ‘intergenerational equity’, found in the Paris Agreement, CLARA takes this approach to residual emissions a step further: we not only have a moral responsibility to minimize emissions in these benchmark years, we have a responsibility to ensure that those remaining residual emissions reflect our concern for equity, and achieving sustainable development.

This approach immediately urges the question of how “residual” is defined—and who gets to define it. It’s usually approached as a set of technical and economic arguments regarding what emissions are ‘hardest to abate’. In the worst case, then, the ‘hard to abate’ question is linked to an ‘ability to pay’ metric, and thus ultimately serves as a proxy for the creation of a new loophole that allows for continued emissions by wealthy countries, industries, and individuals.

CLARA seeks to turn that question around and pose it from within an equity frame: which emissions matter most? What “residuals” must be compensated for at what cost and for whom? Actually this question echoes one from an earlier phase in the climate justice debate, which looked at  the existence of both survival and luxury emissions.

Why are there residual emissions?

Speaking optimistically: we should be able to push power-sector emissions down to zero through complete electrification with renewable energy. Similarly, electrification of the road transport system can drive emissions down to near zero.  

The next-level challenge lies in eliminating greenhouse gas emissions in what are sometimes called ‘hard to abate’ sectors. For example, half of cement’s emissions are baked into the product as it cures—so even solar-powered cement production would be highly emissive. (Emissions in the agriculture sector will also remain—see ‘Net Zero and Equity – the Special Case of Agriculture’.)

Who is presently defining “residual”, or “hard to abate”?

As an example, the air transport sector argues that their emissions are ‘hard to abate’ because they can’t substitute out fossil jet fuel for another product. Energy intensive industries that require extremely high temperatures make a similar argument—no opportunity for technological substitution.  

As sectors decarbonize, the costs of eliminating the last [say] 20% of emissions in that sector will likely rise sharply. Some companies are asserting their need for residual emissions based on this price-point analysis—‘it’s simply cost-prohibitive’ to eliminate some emissions, they argue, so these are residual.

Staying for the moment just with technical thinking about what ‘hard to abate’ means, three arguments are commonly encountered.   

• Intrinsic emissions: Some emissions are intrinsic to the production process.  They can’t be abated. There’s no way to get to ‘real zero’ in this sector. We used the example of cement production above.  

• Efficiency improvements and other incremental changes. Such changes are expensive, but somewhat more predictable. How close this approach gets to ‘real zero’ depends on supportive policy environments and much stronger signals to investors in shifting toward a zero-carbon economy. 

• Finally, in some cases, ‘hard to abate’ is an all or nothing proposition, based on hoped-for technological breakthroughs. It works or it doesn’t.  A number of ‘net zero’ commitments get to zero by relying on gee-whiz technologies that haven’t even been invented yet or haven’t yet proven outside of laboratory conditions. It’s possible, then, that new removal approaches will help get closer to ‘real zero’ goals. But if instead these are technological dead-ends, we may end up with a greater volume of residual emissions than was expected, because we didn’t incentivize or invest adequately in proven incremental approaches.  

Note that this conversation about how to offset, or ‘net out’, or eliminate residual emissions is almost entirely confined to the supply side. What about changing demand? Rarely is there much consideration of what might be done to bring down demand in key sectors like air travel, long-distance shipping, or cement.  We find it ironic that so many commentators view reducing demand as a far-fetched dream, while at the same time embracing the use of totally unproven technologies to achieve ‘net zero’. CLARA member Heinrich Boell Foundation has written about this for different sectors in a series of reports called ‘Radical Realism’, and has published a global 1.5°C mitigation scenario that focuses on reducing production and overconsumption in the Global North.  

But those global elites who are committed to growth at all costs—including by ignoring planetary boundaries on use of fertilizers, or fresh-water availability—use a tactical definition of ‘hard to abate’ that arrogates residual emissions to themselves.  Having decided that their emissions matter more than others, they then effectively argue that ‘hard to abate’ means ‘making major changes to my business model [or consumption patterns]’, which they’re not willing to do. Note the number of corporate ‘net zero’ commitments that involve only modest changes to existing business models, but require huge volumes of offsets to get to net zero. (This is discussed more fully in our Briefs on Fossil Fuels, and the Meat & Dairy sector.) 

Residual emissions with an equity frame

A relatively simple and well-understood approach to equity within a carbon budget approach assigns shares of the limited remaining ‘atmospheric space’ to individuals, or countries, in order to keep warming well below 2°C. But such an approach fails to take historical responsibility for emissions into account. A ‘fair shares’ approach looks at the criteria of responsibility and capacity to respond to climate change. CLARA supports use of the ‘fair shares’ methodology found in the Civil Society Equity Review.

In determining ‘fair share’, the next necessary question to ask is—what’s in that volume of residual emissions? What effort, or failure of effort, does that volume of residual emissions represent? Specifically— is there some agreement both that these residual emissions are truly ‘hard to abate’, and that our determination of difficulty came out of an understanding of equity—the difference between survival and luxury emissions?

We can’t allow ‘hard to abate’ to become residual emissions simply because a  powerful industry decided something cost too much to try, or because the wealthy  decide they want to keep flying at the planet’s expense.  

Residual emissions must instead be used to build adaptive capacity for sustainable development, rather than embedding those emissions within a status quo logic of economic growth, based primarily on allowing for continued luxury consumption.