The report, titled ‘Is net zero enough for the material production sector’, was published by Zero Waste Europe (ZWE) and consultancy firm Eunomia.
It outlined that a ‘business-as-usual’ approach to materials production, which accounts for a quarter of global emissions, could contribute to warming of up to 2.5°C.
For the plastics industry alone, this could be as high as 3.5°C. While the plastics industry currently does not have a roadmap to net zero, the document continued, projections for this study suggest that a trajectory of 2.2°C is possible “even with aggressive decarbonisation”.
Moreover, it said that current industry net zero roadmaps for 2050 are projected to still not meet the target, resulting in warming of up to 2°C.
“Early adoption of proven emission reduction practices, such as the decarbonisation of energy grids, should be made a priority in the near-term,” the report stated. It reasoned that the impact of deploying technologies after 2030 will be substantially less effective.
Recommendations
The report emphasised the need for significant capital investment to achieve electricity decarbonisation in the aluminium sector, highlighting green hydrogen and carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) as alternatives. It also showed that cement and concrete sectors rely heavily on unproven technologies to reduce CO2.
“Retrofitting existing systems in the iron and steel sectors with best available efficiency technologies provides the greatest emissions reduction and could be implemented immediately,” the document then outlined.
The report noted that “faster action will be required”. It stated that most if not all interventions must have reached maturity and market saturation across all material sectors by 2040. “This will likely mean that any significant policies that will drive these changes should be in place by 2030 at the latest,” it explained.
‘Insufficient’
Joan Marc Simon, executive director of ZWE, said: “In view of the ongoing climate negotiations, decarbonisation strategies are insufficient to limit global warming to 1.5°C. The only way forward is to reduce resource consumption, particularly in the Global North. Businesses, governments and civil society should come together and act urgently to make the best of resources available and deploy proven technologies to decarbonise the economy.”
Eunomia’s Simon Hann, lead author of the research, concluded: “We often hear about the importance of keeping to 1.5°C and this essential piece of work helps to demonstrate what that could mean in practice for the materials we all consume. Slowly decarbonising for the next 30 years is evidently not enough and there is a clear need to change the way we think about material production and consumption. Bold and decisive near-term action from policy makers and industry leaders is therefore essential to make this happen.”
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