Global Warming

Carbon Retirement

New research indicates that the only way to limit global warming to 1.5 to 2.0 degrees Celsius, as agreed to internationally, is through the early retirement of the world’s power plants and industrial equipment that burn fossil fuels. That is, unless the facilities can be retrofitted before 2050 to capture and store their carbon emissions, or those emissions are offset by pulling an equal amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

A new report published in the journal Nature points out that reaching the goal will be difficult because the number of fossil fuel-burning power plants and vehicles around the world has increased dramatically during the past decade. This has mainly been due to rapid economic expansion in China and India.

“We need to reach net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by mid-century to achieve stabilization of global temperatures as called for in international agreements such as the Paris accords,” said the study’s lead author Dan Tong of the University of California, Irvine.