(Paris) The world’s fossil fuel reserves contain the equivalent of 3.5 trillion tonnes of greenhouse gases, which would be released if they were used and would undermine international climate objectives, according to an unprecedented inventory published Monday.
Posted at 7:07 p.m.
This phenomenal amount corresponds to what would be released into the atmosphere if the reserves of oil, gas and coal were fully produced and used, according to this global register created by Carbon Tracker and Global Energy Monitor.
This equates to “more than all the emissions produced since the industrial revolution” and “more than seven times the carbon budget remaining to meet the 1.5°C temperature limit”, say the authors. This concept of carbon “budget” refers to the quantity of CO2 that can be issued for a given result, in this case the most ambitious objective of the Paris climate agreement.
Warming since the industrial era, which has been fueled by fossil fuels, has already reached 1.1°C, leading to a series of disasters.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) had suggested last year to give up any new oil or gas project, to accompany a rapid drop in demand and to keep global warming under control.
The registry – which contains data on more than 50,000 sites in 89 countries – aims to provide political leaders and civil society with the data needed to manage the gradual exit from these fossil fuels.
Notably, the ledger shows that the United States and Russia each hold enough fossil fuel reserves to blow up the entire global carbon budget, even if all other countries immediately ceased production. It also identifies the most powerful source of emissions in the world: the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia.
“The global registry will help governments, companies and investors make decisions to align their fossil fuel production with the 1.5° temperature limit and, thus, to concretely prevent the disappearance of our islands”, underlined Simon Kofe, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Tuvalu, one of the Pacific archipelagos threatened by rising waters and global warming.
“We now have a tool that can help effectively end coal, oil and gas production,” he hoped, in a statement accompanying the registry’s release.