Everyone loves a good TED Talk. Here is one of our favorites:
Stop feeling overwhelmed by the global effort to reduce CO2 emissions, says Nigel Topping, the High Level Climate Action Champion for the UN’s climate change conference COP26. Instead, he argues we need to view this complex problem through the lens of systems.
Systems, defined as a repeating set of patterns, can be found in every natural and human setting. These patterns follow underlying rules and have interconnected relationships.
The role of the UN is to drive transformation in every global system, from agriculture to retail from cement to steel to reach a zero carbon future.
To transform these industries Topping argues for a systems approach, where all actors in every system follow underlying rules to get to zero carbon.
Rule #1 - Harness ambitious feedback loops
When businesses commit to zero carbon and invest and innovate in new technologies or ways to do things, they embolden policymakers who in turn change the regulatory system to further support businesses in limiting carbon emissions.
Rule #2 - Set exponential goals
When starting at zero, even a small goal is a huge milestone. Once you get to one, you can start doubling over time. The early adoption costs are high but as time goes on and more people adopt the new technology, the volume increases, costs drive down and the technology becomes widespread.
Rule #3 - Follow shared action pathways
Every actor in the system needs to take similar actions by setting five year goals and collaborating in new ways. The UN’s COP26 has developed toolkits for every sector of the global economy and published a roadmap of shared pathways.
How do these rules work in practice?
Take the global maritime shipping sector. It has similar emissions to the whole of Germany and accounts for 80 percent of global trade. It is made up of fuel providers, policymakers, financiers, customers, technology innovators, civil society, ship builders, ports, and cargo owners.
The maritime shipping sector needs to get 100 percent of ships carbon free by 2050. Currently, the number of zero carbon emitting ships is zero. But the world’s largest container shipping company in the world Maersk has committed to the first zero carbon ship by 2023.
Germany’s Uniper has abandoned plans to build a dirty fuel plant and has instead shifted to producing “green” ammonia, an alternative shipping fuel. The EU has extended carbon pricing to shipping. Technology companies have formed a Green Hydrogen Catapult to speed investment and innovation in alternative energy sources. Civil society is influencing the system by taking fossil fuel companies to court to reduce emissions.
While 100 percent by 2050 looks daunting, with exponential growth that number will be 5 per cent by 2030, with the remainder of ships becoming carbon free in the 2040s.
Another example is electric vehicles. Five years ago, the world’s leading forecasters of the energy system predicted the combustion engine would still be dominant in 2080. But they got it wrong. The world’s largest car manufacturers are quickly shifting towards EVs and policymakers are supporting this shift through regulation and investment in infrastructure. The EU is phasing out combustion engines by 2035 along with China, Canada, and California among others. This happened within five years.
Topping concludes by saying, “the stories we tell about the future are our ambitions. There is a feedback loop between the stories we tell about the path to the future and to the future we create through the actions we take today. If we tell stories of fear and failure, we will derail our collective efforts. But if we tell positive stories about the progress being made toward a zero carbon future, we will create a positive feedback loop.” Says Topping, “the stories we tell the most often are the ones that will come true.”
The UN's climate change conference COP26 is set to take place in November 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland.