How to navigate the energy transition away from fossil fuels

On Nov 22, 2021

Steam rises from the Niederaussem coal-fired power plant operated by German utility RWE, which stands near open-pit coal mines that feed it with coal, on November 13, 2017 near Bergheim, Germany.

Lukas Schulze | Getty Images News | Getty Images

LONDON — The deepening climate emergency underscores the urgent need for policymakers to oversee a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.

How countries navigate this switch, however, is fiercely contested.

The burning of energy sources such as coal, oil and gas, is the chief driver of the climate crisis. Yet, while politicians and business leaders routinely tout their commitment to the energy transition, the world’s fossil fuel dependency remains on track to get even worse.

Climate scientists have repeatedly stressed the best weapon to tackle rising global temperatures is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.

The Glasgow Climate Pact, an agreement reached at the COP26 summit earlier this month, marked the first time ever that an international climate deal explicitly mentioned fossil fuels. The final agreement called for countries to “phase down” coal use and “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies.

This language has done little to inspire confidence, however, particularly in the wake of research that suggests the vast majority of fossil fuels must be kept in the ground if the world is to have any hope of preventing progressively worse and potentially irreversible climate impacts.

It is entirely doable, and it is doable fast, but it will come with a price tag which will then be repaid forever after in a prosperous and healthy society. So, that’s what it is going to take.

Julia Steinberger

Ecological economist at the University of Lausanne

The U.N. has said global fossil fuel use is “dangerously out of sync” with climate goals and activists have pushed for governments to dismantle the fossil fuel economy.

Here, experts assess the challenges of decarbonizing the global economy, how quickly it can be achieved and some of the possible interim solutions.

‘We have to get off fossil fuels’

“I come from Kentucky, I worked tobacco growing up,” Carroll Muffett, chief executive at the non-profit Center for International Environmental Law, told CNBC. “I know what the feel of the tar in my nose is, I know what the choking feeling of the tar in your lungs is when you’re stripping tobacco in winter. And the truth is the U.S. began regulating cigarettes more aggressively because it needed to be done.”

“Yes, there are many people employed in these spaces but that was true of asbestos before. These are products that need to be moved out of our economy.”

Muffett said a “fundamental prerequisite” to a just transition would be for policymakers to explicitly acknowledge that a transition needs to happen. He cited the U.S. government and the coal industry pledging “over and over again” to find ways to use coal despite the climate and health impacts.

“We have to get off fossil fuels, we know that. So, a just transition for…