We Can’t Develop More Oil and Gas and Limit Warming to 1.5 Degrees, Landmark Study Confirms

The world cannot develop more oil and gas while limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. 

This is the conclusion of a first-of-its-kind comparison of major climate models that bolsters a similar claim from the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2021. 

“According to a large consensus across multiple modelled climate and energy pathways, developing any new oil and gas fields is incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C,” the new report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) reads. 

The new report looked at a wide array of climate models showing what would need to be done in terms of oil-and-gas phaseout and wind-and-solar expansion in order to secure a more than 50 percent chance of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which scientists say is essential for avoiding the worst impacts of the climate crisis. The models included those reviewed by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as well as those produced by the private sector and organizations like the IEA and the International Renewable Energy Agency. 

The median of the IPCC scenarios and the IEA’s Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (NZE) scenario found that oil and gas production need to fall by 15 or 30 percent by 2030 and 65 percent by 2050. The other scenarios considered in the comparison also favored a production decline of at least 65 percent by 2050. Because the oil and gas fields that either already exist or are under development are enough to meet demand consistent with these pathways, no new developments are required, Carbon Brief explained. The only way that new oil and gas exploration would be possible in a 1.5 degree world would be if existing fields were retired early, something that almost never happens. 

“Early closure of fields already in production [is] extremely rare and we don’t see that happening unless the economics becomes unfavourable for fields with high extraction costs. Accordingly, since fields are almost never closed before the end of their economic lifetime, we advocate for preventing any new fields from opening up to avoid stranded assets or the risk of busting the carbon budget for 1.5C,”  lead author Olivier Bois von Kursk told Carbon Brief.

The findings are especially important as the UK and certain European countries have been pushing to develop new oil and gas fields to respond to the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For example, the UK’s Climate Minister Graham Stuart said that exploiting 100 new oil and gas licenses was “entirely compatible” with a net-zero target and that the IEA’s claims about no new oil and gas development were too general to apply to the UK specifically, as BusinessGreen reported. The new report, however, found that the no new oil and gas rule very much does apply to the UK and Europe if leaders want to keep 1.5 alive. In 2022 and 2023, new oil and gas development would not help meet the energy shortfall anyway and in the longer term, countries should turn to increased imports, not new infrastructure, to fill any gaps. Further, the energy crisis has shown exactly why doubling down on oil and gas is detrimental to the residents of impacted countries. 

“The recent push for new oil and gas — in the UK, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere — is exactly the opposite of what countries should be doing to build a resilient energy supply system that will shield consumers from geopolitical risks and energy market fluctuations in the long term,” IISD senior researcher Angela Picciariello told BusinessGreen.

When it comes to developing wind and solar, the report found that investments are $450-billion-a-year below where they need to be through 2030. However, governments are planning to spend $570 billion each year on fossil fuels during that same time period, money that could be redirected. 

“There is no shortage of available capital for the energy transition; the problem is rather that energy investment is going to the wrong places, massively funding new oil and gas fields instead of renewables,” Bois von Kursk told BusinessGreen. “Governments must enable environments for redirecting both public and private capital flows toward the clean energy transition.”