Usually, Tim Lenton, a professor in the earth system science at the University of Exeter in England, produces scientific publications that alert us to the climatic tipping points that our planet is crossing more and more regularly. This time, the scientist set out to demonstrate that this training mechanism could have positive effects on the ecological transition.
In a report presented Thursday January 19 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, produced by the University of Exeter and in partnership with the consulting firm Systemiq, Tim Lenton, and his colleagues estimate that three tipping points of the transition, if they were crossed , could reduce emissions from sectors covering 70% of CO2 emissions. They cover electric transport, fertilizers for agriculture, and food. Three major sources of emissions that still deserve significant decarbonization efforts.
“Each of these great levers increases the chances of mobilizing others and could thus trigger a cascade of positive tipping points to move us away from a climate catastrophe”, underlined Mark Meldrum, of the company Systemiq, co-author of the report. The goal: to make these low-carbon solutions more competitive than polluting ones so that they develop exponentially.
For the runaway mechanism to work, a clear decision is needed in a given sector, which then makes it possible to generate an increase in the production of these products useful for the transition, and thus a reduction in their cost. And the good news is that the system is already working according to the authors of the report. A first tipping point has already been crossed in the electricity sector, and another is very close in road transport, they explain. They point out that the cost of lithium-ion batteries has fallen by 97% over the past three decades, and that price is likely to continue to fall as growing demand for electric vehicles drives larger-scale production. Thus, the world today has 150 giga-factories in operation when there was only one just five years ago.
“This is one of the tipping points identified by scientists in which we are the most advanced”, can we read. By encouraging an acceleration in this area (with obligations to purchase zero-emission vehicles or a rapid increase in the construction of charging infrastructure), the authors believe that progress would also become irreversible in the sector of renewable electricity coupled with batteries. And we are now very close to reaching this tipping point with in particular the regulations on the end of the sale of thermal vehicles in 2030 in Europe, as well as in the United Kingdom, and 2035 in China. This should quickly bring down the cost of energy storage, and thus favor the wind and solar power generation sectors.
Another sector close to a positive tipping point is the use of green ammonia for agriculture. This substance is widely used in the creation of fertilizers, but it needs to be produced by electrolysis, and therefore still very strongly linked to fossil energy sources. The use of electricity produced by renewable energy sources would not only make it possible to produce green ammonia, but also to lower the prices of electrolysers, which would be immediately beneficial to the development of hydrogen. At the end of the chain, this should thus make it possible to use hydrogen more widely for maritime transport, or the production of steel, in replacement of gas.
According to this document, the implementation of an agreement for a mixture of 25% green ammonia in the manufacture of fertilizers could create a demand for nearly 100 GigaWatt of hydrogen electrolyzers, which would reduce the costs of investment of around 70% compared to current prices.
The last idea is to develop in a much more voluntary way the track of alternative proteins to replace animal proteins, in particular by using vegetable proteins, which are quite similar in terms of cost, taste and texture. The authors thus underline that public ordering, through purchases of vegetable proteins by the public administration, hospitals and schools, could be an important lever for change.
The use of proteins of plant origin would thus have several implications: it would make it possible to reduce CO2 emissions linked to livestock farming, but also to free up agricultural land. According to this report, if we used 20% plant protein in food, it would free up 400 to 800 million hectares of land currently used for livestock, or 7 to 15% of global agricultural land. These areas could thus be reallocated to reforestation, thus restoring carbon sinks, and contributing to the reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere.
“We need to find and trigger the positive socio-economic tipping points if we are to limit the risk of damaging climate tipping points,” summarized Tim Lenton in the Guardian. In a study published in September in the journal Scienceresearchers had already identified sixteen climatic breaking points that could lead to global or regional runaway, and estimated that five of them, such as the melting of permafrost, or the disappearance of corals, could soon be reached.
