In addition to the financial considerations that have to be made, the current carbon budget must also be considered and whether new fossil projects still fit into this. And that’s where the shoe starts to squeeze. All world leaders have agreed that they want to limit global warming to 1.5℃. Carbon budget for the accompanying 1.5℃ sometime in early 2020 500 gigatons CO2. That’s the total amount of CO2 we can still emit before we reach 1.5℃ warming.

On the other hand, the global fossil infrastructure and the amount of CO2 it will emit over its next lifetime. The latter IPCC report estimates these CO2 emissions from fossil infrastructure in 2018 to be at least 660 gigatons of CO2. This means that global fossil infrastructure will emit more CO2 through its planned end-of-life in 2018 than would be possible under a 1.5℃ carbon budget. In addition, according to the same IPCC report, at least 190 gigatons of CO2 new fossil infrastructure were also planned in 2018, which have now been partially realized.

Now, by the end of 2022, the remaining carbon budget for 1.5℃ is less than 400 gigatons and current fossil infrastructure will likely account for about twice that. So there’s already too much CO2 ‘in the pipe’ for the 1.5℃ carbon budget we still have.

The part of CO2 from the current fossil infrastructure that has not yet been produced can be captured using carbon capture and storage. CO2 is captured in the chimneys of, for example, coal or gas-fired power plants and stored in old gas fields. In addition, small amounts of CO2 can be removed from the atmosphere by (re)reforestation or other forms of negative emission. These methods, questionable whether they will work on a large scale, will almost certainly not be sufficient to close the gap between the carbon budget for 1.5℃ and future emissions from fossil infrastructure.