Climate change: What happened in 2022 and what can 2023 bring?

We stepped into 2023 with record-high temperatures in Europe and a once-in-a-century cold wave in North America, as yet two additional examples of the consequences of the climate emergency.

Also concerning the climate, it is time to reflect on the past to imagine a better future. In a time of upheavals and an overdose of uncertainties due to war, Covid-19, inflation, etc., we take stock here of the stark reality of the climate and ecological crises, but also of the major progress, opportunities and reasons for hope into the new year.

We live in an era of deepening paradoxes. 2022 was the year during which unprecedented action was taken on the climate and biodiversity crises, while awareness and support to climate action permeated all societies to new high levels.

But it was also marked by ever-growing climate disasters (most notably catastrophic flooding in Pakistan and Sudan, severe heatwaves in China and Europe, famines in Somalia and Ethiopia, drought and wildfires in California and in Europe, hurricanes in Cuba and Florida), and doom-laden scientific reports, for instance, the February IPCC report showing that climate impacts are accelerating and could quickly become irreversible.

The world remains on a track of blowing past the limit of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels set in the Paris Agreement, with many national climate plans not ambitious enough, or not being met at all.

And yet, this has been an inflection-point-year, with landmark global agreements which were far from being guaranteed at the beginning of 2022. Yes, rather than providing a new impetus, those global agreements are merely catching up to the ambition levels that are necessary to avoid the most catastrophic impacts. Yes, commitments and ambitions remain insufficient overall, and the implementation of those agreements is very challenging.

Still, those agreements are absolute pre-requisite conditions for any meaningful progress, so they should be celebrated! Ample opportunities exist to accelerate, and to add stringent monitoring and compliance mechanisms to the agreements, while technological progress bodes very well for the near- and long-term.

Let’s try and sum up…

· Increasing climate-related disasters, and many studies confirming the continued warming of the Earth, much faster than what climate scientists had predicted. The World Meteorological Organization released stark reports all throughout 2022, record warmth and climate disasters are all adding up to exacerbate migratory, food and water crises.

· Climate change is here and we are not ready. The United Nations and the IPCC are alerting us that we are failing to adapt to the consequences of climate change and that this lack of preparedness is destroying lives and livelihoods all around the world at an unprecedented rate. Efforts in adaptation should be urgently increased at the same level as efforts to mitigate and reduce emissions. The illness is here, thus we must act both on what causes it and on its consequences.

· Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions did not fall in 2022, in fact they continued to rise, making the target of cutting 50% of those emissions by 2030 ever more elusive. Record levels of the three main GHG’s — carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane — were reported, with the biggest year-on-year jump in concentrations in 40 years, and human activity as a main factor in the changing climate

· Wars, and particularly the Ukraine one, disrupted the global energy landscape, with direct impacts on prices of anything requiring energy to be produced and transported, most alarmingly food. The war in Ukraine precipitated a fossil fuels crisis, with western countries scrambling to reduce their dependence on Russian oil and gas. This took away a lot of the climate focus, with the energy emergency driving some very adverse policy moves in many countries such as reopening old power plants running on coal, searching for new suppliers of oil and gas instead of forcing more use of renewables, expanding existing coal mines as it is happening in Germany.

· Globally, coal consumption reached an all-time high in 2022

· The fossil fuel industry grew even more powerful. Oil and gas industries made record profits as the demand surged for oil and gas coming from sources other than from Russia. António Guterres (UN) compared their behavior to that of the major tobacco companies in the mid-20th century, fueling our addiction and using delaying tactics. We witnessed a record high number of gas and oil lobbyists at the climate conference COP27 who no doubt influenced leaving out the mention of phasing out fossil fuels from the final COP27 agreement. To be sure, this influence was amplified by the behavior, ambivalent at best, hypocritical more probably, of some major fossil fuels producers.

· With crises piling up, national and companies’ budgets are under pressure due to the economic contraction and inflation, a much-higher share of the national budgets is devoted to measures to counter inflation or to military expenditures. The challenge for businesses and governments alike will be to have sufficient means to sustain any existing momentum of environmental action, let alone accelerating it.

· Some significant legislative setbacks occurred, such as the EU postponing its legislation to cut in half its use of pesticides.

· The UN Environment Programme pushed for a deal in March to fight plastic pollution through an international treaty that will be concluded by 2024. This opens the way to five rounds of negotiations. The urgency is high there too: world production of plastic (made from petrol) doubled between 2000 and 2020, to reach 400 million tons per year, and would near 1 billion tons per year by 2050 if nothing is done about it. This implies a quadrupling of the current pace of plastic pollution, with 11 million tons of plastic being dumped in the ocean every year.

· A July decision by the UN General Assembly to declare that access to a clean and healthy environment is a universal human right. Although the resolution is not legally binding, this is a boost and an encouragement to fight environmentally destructive policies and projects within all countries.

· The U.S. congress passed in August the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill of enormous importance, misleadingly named in fact, as it is actually aimed at reducing dramatically the U.S. carbon emissions, with ripple effects on global trade and on clean-energy trends. With at least 370 billion dollars funding for clean energy, this Act is the largest single piece of climate funding in history. It has sparked massive investment in the US and will boost international progress on low- or no-carbon technologies

· Major agreements achieved in the UN’s Ocean Conference in June (although negotiations have stalled there), the UN Climate Change Conference COP27 in November, and the UN Biodiversity Conference COP15 in December. With all the frustrating slowness and perceived lack of ambition associated with the need for global consensus, the UN continued to lead on this essential mission to move the needle with all nations on board. The UN process is putting sustained pressure on developed economies to cut their fossil fuels use, materialize and increase their financial support to developing countries. This financing is crucial for coping with the worst effects of climate change that are happening in the Global South. The North finally recognizing the financial needs of the South in climate change mitigation and adaptation has been the key enabler of this remarkable success.

· The election of Luis Inácio Lula Da Silva in Brazil raised hopes that the severe ecological damages his predecessor inflicted may be reversed, particularly in the Amazon. After Mr. Bolsonaro came to power in 2019, deforestation increased 50% within 6 months, and an area of forest larger than Belgium was devastated in less than 3 years. The election in Australia of the Labor Party also marked a turning point away from adverse “deny and delay” climate policies. Governments, supported and often pushed by their constituencies, step in more resolutely in climate & biodiversity actions, and that’s an essential global trend.

· In December the EU concluded on a ground-breaking, ambitious but imperfect legislation, forbidding the importation of products linked to deforestation. This is the first legislation of its kind in the world, turning the table on a large share of the world trade (the EU is causing approximately 16% of the world’s deforestation, second only to China). It is a major first step, much improvement remains obviously needed, for example to take into account ecosystems other than just forests, for instance savannahs.

· The European Union also reformed its Carbon Market and introduced in December a Carbon Tax at its borders, which will subject imports of steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizers, electricity, hydrogen, etc., covering about 60% of industrial emissions attributed to the EU, to the EU climate standard. Also a first of its kind, it will take effect in 2026 or 2027, the tax proceeds will flow in part into a social fund for climate, starting in 2026 with a budget of 86.7 billion euros until 2032. This will help finance vulnerable households, SME’s support, but also long-term investments in e.g. buildings renovation and low carbon transport. As a reminder, the EU also has decided to forbid the sale of new thermic vehicles starting in 2035.

· Nuclear fusion: For the first time the possibility of generating more energy than is consumed to provoke fusion was demonstrated by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, while parallel efforts and progress continue with the international tokamak ITER venture. This is very promising for the long-term, although decades of R&D remain in front of us before this technology could be applied at any scale.

· To bridge that long period, leveraging our natural fusion mega-reactor (the sun) is still one of the key plays. Solar power prices plummeted some 85%, and solar power capacity around the world is on track to roughly triple by 2027 and overtake coal as the leading global source of energy

· Batteries technology, crucial to storing green power, is improving dramatically

· Green hydrogen is advancing and can be particularly useful in shipping and energy storage.

The Russian fossil energy crisis has triggered a profound acceleration of dependent countries, foremost the EU, moving towards energy self-reliance with renewables. By May 2022, the EU had committed to spending close to 200 billion dollars to speed up the transition to solar and wind electricity. Its renewables target for 2030 increased from 40% to 45%.

· Around the world sales of electric heat pumps (for heating and cooling buildings) were up 15%

· In October and November, gas usage in Europe was roughly a quarter below its 5-years average for the same period, driven by short-term consumer behavior changes, but also long-term investments in e.g. solar panels, electric vehicles, heat pumps, which has a virtuous circle effect of dramatically lowering unit cost of those technologies, thereby boosting adoption.

· Renewables are set to double in the 2022–2027 period, in comparison with the preview 5 years, and to surpass coal’s share of total energy by 2025.

The year 2022 has been rich in setbacks, but also in momentous progress. We collectively may not be doing enough, and not fast enough, but 2022 has been a turning point in the world finally taking the existential climate crisis seriously, at all levels — politically, businesses, citizens… The voices from the people claiming more action on climate and biodiversity grew through activism, protests, petitions; even in China and Iran. As anger and anxiety keep growing in the face of not-fast-enough action, people’s voices will continue rising and will become more influential in a hyper-connected world.

2022 has delivered hope and insights into paths ahead that may spare humanity the worst climate and ecological disasters. No time for relaxing or for complacency… the pace of warming has slowed down since the Paris Agreement, but forces resisting change are hugely powerful, and Earth remains on track to tip over irreversible thresholds. For sure, severe threats will continue to loom over this new year, with acute energy disruptions, and the induced major crises. In fact, many of the headwinds we listed are not disappearing anytime soon.

But neither are the opportunities disappearing! Technologies for renewables are advancing very rapidly, their costs are plummeting, and there exist virtuous tipping points too, after which their adoption increase exponentially. A widespread realization happens in most human communities, and particularly in developed countries, that our current economic and consumption model is critically unsustainable and requires fundamental shifts in our societies. This will make more acceptable and hopefully easier the necessary transformations in the three global systems: Energy, Cities and Food, which are the main culprits for climate change and biodiversity loss. It is also critical that international dialogue continues re-building trust between the Global North and the Global South, as well as with youth, women and indigenous people.

Of course, we don’t have a crystal ball, but one is actually not required for us all to know the levers we need to continue to push, promote and communicate about in 2023. We quoted several of them here.

Cover photo: A child collects water in the Horn of Africa region which is suffering multi-year droughts. Photo: UNICEF/Rich