Solar Photovoltaics (PV)

The Paris Agreement was reached on 12 December 2015 when Parties to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) reached a landmark agreement to combat climate change and to accelerate the pathway towards a sustainable low carbon economy.

The Agreement’s central aim was to keep the global temperature rise this century to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to attempt to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

However, in October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report warning that the impact of even 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming will be far greater than expected.

After all, we’ve seen an astonishing run of record-breaking storms, forest fires, droughts, coral bleaching, heat waves and floods around the world over the last decade with just 1 degree Celsius of global warming. It’s hardly surprising that we should expect much of this to get substantially worse with any further rises.

The difference between a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees Celsius could have a huge impact on our planet.

Biodiversity is a big casualty of climate change.  Temperature rises make it harder for vulnerable ecosystems and the species which rely on them to adapt.  It means we face losing species, even to the point of extinction, both on land and in the sea.  Coral reefs are particularly vulnerable and if warming does reach 2 degrees Celcius we’re on a path to lose virtually all coral reefs by 2100.

The Arctic is also a clear barometer of climate change. If we continue our path to 2 degrees warming we could see an ice-free Arctic every decade.  Yet if we lower warming to just 1.5 degrees we can make this just a once in a century occurrence.

Environmental issues are only one consequence of climate change.  There are serious implications for our health, socio-economic development, food security, infrastructure and productivity, transportation and energy sectors.

In November 2018, The Lancet published a report warning that climate change impacts – from heatwaves to worsening storms, floods and fires – threatened to overwhelm health systems.  That same month, Thomson Reuters Foundation warned that air pollution from burning fossil fuels is cutting global life expectancy by an average of 1.8 years per person, making it the world’s top killer.

In January 2019 The World Economic Forum released their annual Global Risks Report, and for the third year in a row, environmental threats dominate the list both in terms of impact and likelihood.

Biodiversity loss is a big concern and The Living Planet Index, which tracks more than 4,000 species across the globe, reports a 60% decline in average abundance since 1970.  It also has potentially dire implications for health and socio-economic development thanks to the impact on the human food chain. The report suggests that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are affecting the nutritional composition of staple crops such as rice and wheat. Research suggests that by 2050 this could lead to zinc deficiencies for 175 million people, protein deficiencies for 122 million, and loss of dietary iron for 1 billion.

Meanwhile, the increase in severe weather events caused by climate change are associated with disruption or complete loss of essential services such as water and energy supplies.  Changes in temperature and rainfall place additional pressures on transport and communication infrastructure, in particular the rail, road, water and energy sectors. Climate change also poses risks to industry as empirical evidence shows flooding and extreme weather events damaging assets and disrupting business operations is the greatest risk now and in the future.