Southeast Asian power plants fail to meet UN carbon targets designed to combat global warming
Emissions thresholds are calibrated to keep global temperatures within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels but the region’s existing and planned facilities are overwhelmingly in breach of these standards
Almost 84 per cent of Southeast Asia’s planned and existing fossil fuel power plants are incompatible with future scenarios that avoid catastrophic damage from climate change, according a new study from the University of Oxford.
The report, which comes on the heels of a major United Nations-backed study of the impacts of global temperatures rising 1.5 degrees Celsius, is based on analysis of the amount of carbon expected to be emitted over the lifespan of the plants. Those estimates are then compared to how much carbon can be released without the planet reaching certain temperature-increase limits.
The Oxford study underscores challenges facing policymakers in government and finance about what kind of power technologies to support, especially in Southeast Asia, where developing nations are seeking to bring electricity and wealth to growing populations without exacerbating climate change.
The analysis will allow governments and investors to assess whether plants align with climate goals, said Ben Caldecott, one of the study’s authors and founding director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Programme.
“We are moving away from a situation where groups can make unsubstantiated claims about how their assets or investments are aligned with climate change mitigation or the Paris agreement,” Caldecott said, referring to the 2015 accord among nearly 200 nations. “We can now verify and evaluate such claims objectively and transparently, and this is essential if we are to move the power sector, and indeed other sectors, towards net-zero carbon emissions.”