Perspective: Is it time to consider temporary ‘off-ramps’ for our climate targets?
Despite commitments from many countries to limit the impacts of climate change, the clean energy transition is moving far slower than is necessary to meet global targets.
Released ahead of COP29, the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2024 Emissions Gap report concluded that global temperatures could rise to 3.1°C above preindustrial levels by 2100 with today’s policies — blowing far past the 1.5°C target established under the Paris Agreement. And even with greater levels of clean energy deployment, the International Energy Agency projected in its 2024 World Energy Outlook that global demand for coal, oil, and natural gas will grow until 2030.
Highlighting the widening gap between the ambitions and reality of the clean energy transition, Chris Greig, the Theodora D. ’78 & William H. Walton III ’74 Senior Research Scientist in the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, argued in a recent Nature Communications perspective for a reconsideration of how to navigate the risks of transforming the world’s energy systems in only a handful of decades.
Greig and co-author Sam Uden, managing director at non-profit Net-Zero California and graduate student at Imperial College London, propose an alternative, risk-based strategy that would enable countries to reorient their decarbonization plans in the face of energy transition bottlenecks.
What follows is a discussion between Greig and Uden about mitigation ‘off-ramps,’ a formal process by which governments could temporarily divert from their decarbonization targets to better manage the risks of the clean energy transition while still driving the necessary emissions reductions to meet climate targets.
In your perspective, you point out that the world is falling behind or even sliding backward on its climate targets. What has given you cause for concern, and why do you think progress has lagged?
Chris Greig: We are already falling behind on our goals and are arguably still in the easiest stages of the energy transition. The reality is that the world has yet to reach peak coal usage, let alone peak oil usage. Part of the issue is that when the world encounters disruptions to the energy system, the response is to act reactively. And typically, that means defaulting to fossil fuel assets. We saw this in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where governments responded by reopening coal plants and installing new liquified natural gas facilities and regasification terminals. These actions are often taken in the name of energy security without considering the long-term consequences — the extension or even the construction of new, carbon-intensive assets can lock in decades of additional emissions.
Sam Uden: I think there is an impression that the clean energy transition is easy, that clean energy projects are always low-cost, and that the transition itself should be a straightforward affair — all that lacks is the political will. But there are a series of legitimate economic, technical and social challenges in executing a rapid energy transition, both in terms of expanding clean energy and phasing down fossil fuels. It’s highly plausible — as we have already begun to see — that multiple countries will be in a position where they’re falling short on their commitments. The problem is that not many people have thought seriously about what to do in that situation.
What is your idea for mitigation off-ramps, and how can they help solve some of today’s issues?
Greig: The idea for what we call policy off-ramps is informed by mission abort policy: at what point do you accept a small setback to avoid a catastrophic failure? In our case, it would be framed as the point at which a government would temporarily depart from its climate mitigation strategy to avoid disastrously high lock-ins of carbon infrastructure. But the key with off-ramps is to clearly define, in advance, the threshold of disruption that would trigger an off-ramp, how long the departure would last, and a plan for how the government could get back on track or in some way compensate for the delay. If we do have to make decisions that take us off-course on our decarbonization journey, it’s imperative that these decisions are not taken lightly — that they are strategic instead of reactive.
Uden: Maybe you shut down some fossil fuel assets but afterward realize there is a risk that you won’t have enough renewables or firm capacity to provide the needed grid stability. You might then take an off-ramp. It could be reopening those assets for a specified time, during which you set new deployment goals for renewables. You would also quantify the emissions implications of reopening those plants and identify a strategy to compensate for those emissions. But the key is that these conditions are defined before taking the off-ramp. You don’t just wave your hands and say, “Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll make up for it somehow.”
Are you concerned that off-ramps could allow countries a convenient ‘out’ on their climate commitments?
Greig: From our perspective, governments are already informally making off-ramp choices, or decisions that will set them back on their clean energy goals, whether that be reopening coal plants, handing out new oil and gas permits, or installing new natural gas infrastructure. The problem is that they are making these decisions without much foresight or rules governing how long they will last or how these new assets will fit in with their decarbonization roadmaps. Having a formalized process for making these decisions would go a long way in increasing transparency and accountability for the actions that governments are already taking.
Uden: We have no illusions that it would be unpopular to formalize a process for slowing down decarbonization efforts, even temporarily. But I think of an off-ramp as somewhat of a last resort, like a “break glass in case of emergency” situation. Ideally, we are forward-thinking enough to have made contingency plans before encountering serious technical or geopolitical bottlenecks to the energy transition. Ultimately, we want to avoid a situation where we keep falling behind on our commitments, so we slowly push them back to 2060, then 2070, and so on, until they become meaningless. We also don’t want to rely on the hope that we can scale massive amounts of carbon removal in the second half of the century to remedy any significant overshoot.
Is there potential for off-ramps to allow bad actors the chance to intentionally delay the energy transition?
Greig: We absolutely acknowledge that there is a risk of vested interests trying to exploit an off-ramp policy for their own gain. In our perspective, we propose the idea of some independent body or independent government agency with decision-making authority over the implementation of off-ramp policies. It would be something like an “Energy Transitions Office” with a broad purview for managing the energy transition. Still, it will be critical to insulate it from special interests and lobbying. Without it, we would end up in a situation no better than today’s.
Uden: For example, California has an Air Resources Board. State legislators have delegated authority to the Air Resources Board to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and it has a broad ability to establish and execute a credible net-zero plan. I think the leadership and credibility of the state’s Air Resources Board is one of the reasons why California has had so much success so far in spearheading a lot of innovative climate action and a broad portfolio of climate policies.
What should we consider before going down the off-ramp path?
Greig: Ultimately, our risk-based approach is one of many alternatives. If we do the research, think deeply about the design and implementation of these off-ramp policies, and then decide it’s a bad idea, that’s fine from our point of view. However, given that the world is already taking these off-ramp actions without any systematic approach, it would be worthwhile to explore them as an opportunity. In the end, the best approach is the one that will get us to net-zero as soon as possible.
Uden: I like to think about it this way: If your life personally depended on getting to net-zero, would you commit to one target, one plan, and one set of technologies and hope for the best? Of course not. You’d want as many contingency plans and backup options as possible because the future is unknowable. But we don’t currently have the necessary framework for defining and implementing those contingencies and options. The reality is that many people’s lives do depend on limiting the impacts of climate change — particularly the possibility of an extreme warming scenario, which is non-trivial. Every tenth degree of warming that we avoid matters.
The article, “Temporary mitigation off-ramps could help manage decarbonization headwinds,” was published on September 17 in Nature Communications.