Scientists backed by the Swiss government warn that widely accepted global scenarios for reducing carbon emissions to avoid dangerous climate change in reality pose a 60-80 percent probability of breaching the 1.5 degrees Celsius (C) ‘safe limit’ agreed by world nations under the 2015 Paris Agreement.  

Their new preprint paper published in March, which is currently under review with the journal Environmental Research Letters, finds that only a “fast and complete” global renewable energy transition led by solar power to be accomplished before 2030 can reduce this probability to a more acceptable level of around 20 percent. 

The vast majority of decarbonization scenarios put forward by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN Environment Program, especially those which are consistent with actual current levels of carbon emissions, point toward the 60—80 percent probability of breaching the 1.5°C safe limit. 

The IPCC has called for emissions to be halved by 2030, with a net zero target for 2050. 

Even when the more ambitious IPCC decarbonization scenarios are taken into account, the scientists find that: “All the IPCC scenarios violate the 1.5°C peak heating target” with a probability between 40 percent and higher than 80 percent. 

“Such high probabilities of violation would be considered unacceptable in other areas, like engineering or public health,” write the co-authors Harald Desing and Rolf Widmer of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology in Switzerland.  

“Growing understanding of the Earth system suggests that peak heating beyond 1.5°C may be an existential threat to the biosphere and therefore also humanity,” they explain in their paper. “Transitions that exceed this vital threshold with a high probability expose future generations to substantial risks without their prior consent.” 

Although some residual probability might still be acceptable for society, they say, by tolerating high probabilities between 40 and 80 percent the current climate discourse “exposes future generations to unprecedented risks without their prior consent.”  

To illustrate the urgency of climate action, the paper shows that even if carbon emissions were to remain constant at 2018 levels, there would be a 66 percent probability of depleting the remaining carbon budget before 2028. Of course, carbon emissions continue to rise every year and are forecast to increase this year by as much as 5 percent. 

However, while this sober warning suggests that the “existential threat” of dangerous climate change beyond the 1.5°C limit is baked into prevailing decarbonisation plans, the paper also shows that a rapid transition to a solar-based renewable energy system can dramatically reduce this risk. But we need to act fast.  

The paper uses the concept of Energy Return on Investment (EROI)—a measure of the amount of energy used to extract a certain quantity of energy from any given resource—to assess the prospects of such a transition. The speed of action would require a temporary increase in fossil fuel emissions above current levels “for the sole purpose of accelerating the growth of renewable energy capacity” and switching off the “fossil engine” before 2030.  

“The solar engine grows fastest, when the fossil engine’s output is not replaced by solar energy during the transition… but is increased to utilize all available idle capacity,” says the paper. “Consequently, fossil CO2 emissions will temporarily increase during the transition but will be reduced to zero as soon as the solar engine can replace the fossil engine.”

Lead author Harald Desing told Motherboard that: “The fast transition would need to commence beginning of next year or end of 2021 and… would be complete anywhere in between 2024 and 2028.” 

Although this is far faster than all conventional decarbonization scenarios, it is the only feasible way to reduce the probability of breaching the 1.5C limit to a genuinely safer level.   

Desing explained that such a rapid global solar transition would create further new possibilities for decarbonization due to the potential for clean electrification of key sectors: 

“The fastest possible transition is achieved by investing all overcapacity we have in today’s fossil energy system in building the solar system. And given the fast exponential growth, the size of overcapacity built into the solar system doesn’t matter that much… This indicates that solar overcapacity is fast to obtain… having a negligible effect on the climate but opening unprecedented possibilities.” 

Recent peer-reviewed research by Columbia University engineer Marc Perez has shown that overbuilding solar capacity—aiming for 100 percent if not more—creates a level of surplus solar energy which can be used to top off the grid, producing electricity some 75 percent cheaper. Perez found that if the US, for instance, operated an overcapacity solar-dominated grid with limited wind power and energy storage, it could generate a constant source of electricity even cheaper than today’s conventional production without intermittency problems. 

The Swiss paper thus confirms that while building out the global renewable energy system will entail exploitation of carbon intensive resources, if deployed correctly this can pave the way for shifting all further societal activities including the manufacturing of renewable energy systems onto the new solar-based power system: “Fossil fuel use should be increased temporarily with the sole purpose to build the solar engine as fast as possible to subsequently switch off the fossil engine forever,” the paper concludes. 

“As solar overcapacity is fast to build, we see two main advantages,” said Desing. “First, it reduced the need for storage capacity. Storage is energetically expensive as it either has high embodied energy, for example, battery, and has a low turnaround efficiency, for instance for synthetic fuels.” Second, he said, solar overcapacity can then provide the clean power to sustain direct air capture and storage (DACS) technologies to drawdown further carbon from the atmosphere. “Stabilizing the climate in the long run, it is necessary to reduce the atmospheric CO2 concentration down to below 350ppm. Solar overcapacity is ideal for this task, operating DACS during peak sun hours and summer, when idle capacity is available.” 

The new research has been funded under the Sustainable Economy National Research Program (NRP) run by the Swiss National Science Foundation. NRPs are administered by the Swiss Federal Council, the seven-member executive council that constitutes the federal government of Switzerland. 

Two years ago, Desing’s team at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology released a paper published in the peer-reviewed Energies journal which attempted to calculate the “global appropriate technical potential”—the actual quantity of energy that could be produced for societal use given realistic environmental, land-use and other constraints—of a solar-dominated renewable energy system. They found that such a system, if deployed properly with sufficient overcapacity, could generate vastly more energy than the existing fossil fuel-based industrial energy system.  

Their study took into account the need to remain within earth system boundaries while also accounting for demand for chemicals and materials. It found that the technical potential incorporating solar installed across the built environment as well as the world’s deserts would be as high as 71 terawatts (TW) of clean electricity annually, “which is significantly larger than the current global energy demand”. Currently global energy consumption is around 17.7 TW, which according to Desing is equivalent to 6.7 TW of electricity.

This is orders of magnitude higher—more than ten times as much—as current levels of energy consumption, and leaves large quantities of electricity “which can then be transformed into e-fuels and heat where necessary.” 

Even without deserts, Desing told Motherboard, solar concentrated on the built environment alone would still contribute 22 TW of electricity, which is a huge three times higher than current equivalent energy consumption.

Desing and his team conclude that this means there is “sufficient renewable energy potentially available to increase energy access for a growing world population as well as for a development towards increasingly closed material cycles within the technosphere”—that is, to devote more energy toward the ‘circular economy’ through increased recycling of raw materials and electrification of industry.  

If the Swiss team’s data is correct—and they have expressed 99 percent confidence in their calculations—a solar transition by 2030 could not only avert the worst risks of dangerous climate change by switching off the age of fossil fuels forever, it would usher a new age of clean energy abundance unleashing “unprecedented possibilities” for human civilization.

Medical research has always been a crucial component of public health, and the COVID-19 pandemic has made us all hyper-aware of each new study advertising some advancement in our understanding of the virus. Now, an attention-grabbing 2020 study that suggested smoking may reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection has been retracted due to two co-authors having undeclared connections to the tobacco industry. 

The study, “Characteristics and risk factors for COVID-19 diagnosis and adverse outcomes in Mexico: an analysis of 89,756 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases” was published as an “early view” in July 2020 in European Respiratory Journal with the claim that smoking cigarettes made patients 23 percent less likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19. The work was a joint effort by researchers at the University of Patras in Greece, the University of Utah, and in Mexico. It received coverage in the media along with other studies suggesting similar findings, including in the Daily Mail.

This claim is contrary to what many other studies have found regarding the connection between smoking and COVID severity. In fact, in some US states smoking is considered a comorbidity. This claim itself is not what caused the paper to be retracted on March 4th, rather, two co-authors failed to declare their connections to the tobacco industry before submitting their work.

“[O]ne of the authors (José M. Mier) at the time [of submission] had a current and ongoing role in providing consultancy to the tobacco industry on tobacco harm reduction,” the journal wrote in its retraction statement. “And another (Konstantinos Poulas) at the time was a principal investigator for the Greek NGO NOSMOKE.” 

The journal’s statement explains that NOSMOKE has funding connections to the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW), which is funded by the tobacco industry. According to the University of Bath’s Tobacco Tactics website, NOSMOKE “develops new vaping products and shares pro e-cigarette research from the tobacco industry,” which is itself invested in developing vaping technology and promoting it as a safer way to ingest nicotine than smoking. Vaporizers are referred to by the tobacco industry and by NOSMOKE as modified risk tobacco products, or MRTPs. NOSMOKE is located at the Patras Science Park, which according to Tobacco Tactics received grants in 2018 from the tobacco industry for the establishment of “an institute, which operates as a research and innovation center in the field of modified risk products (MRTPs) and tobacco harm reduction.”

According to the journal’s retraction notice, undisclosed conflicts of interest are not typically enough reason to retract a study. However, the journal has a strict policy against considering papers from authors with ties to the tobacco industry. On balance, “the editors felt the decision was justified based on the nature of the undisclosed relationship, in the context of the sensitive subject matter presented, and on the need to align the published journal content with the bylaws of the publishing society,” the journal said. Additionally, there was no question of scientific misconduct. 

Konstantinos Farsalinos, one of the study’s co-authors and a frequent collaborator on NOSMOKE-affiliated research who was not named by the journal as having links to the tobacco industry, told Motherboard by email that he considers this retraction decision “unfair and unsubstantiated.”

“I was contacted by the editors of the journal only after the decision for retraction was made,” Farsalinos continues. “I  proposed to publicly release the full dataset and the statistical script so that all findings could be independently verified. The editors declined.”

Farsalinos also said that the conflicts related to the study’s retraction were “irrelevant to the study’s main aims” which was to identify COVID-19 risk factors to prioritize in low-income populations.

Additionally, Theo Giannouchos, the study’s first author who was not one of the authors named as having undisclosed ties to the tobacco industry, pointed out to Motherboard by email that the conclusion the study came to was still by no means an encouragement of smoking.

“It is currently unclear whether nicotine exerts any positive effect, however, there is no doubt that smoking cannot be used as a protective measure and smoking cessation should be encouraged during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the study reads.

The retracted study is also not the only one to hint at a possible connection between smoking and reduced COVID-19 infection. A 2020 study by researchers from Israel’s Clalit Health Services provider, published as a preprint, found a similarly curious possible connection. A French study also uncovered similar findings. Still, many other studies and official guidance from public health organizations indicate that smoking is a risk factor for COVID-19 and for people’s health generally. 

Despite the dishonesty that stems from conflict of interest (COI) omissions, failure to declare COIs are not always a one-way ticket to retraction. But when it comes to the tobacco industry, this can be more complicated. 

“Unfortunately, the tobacco industry and tobacco industry-funded scientists have a long and notorious history of withholding, falsifying and manipulating research data,” said Sven-Eric Jordt, an associate professor in anesthesiology at the Duke University School of Medicine who studies tobacco regulatory science and was not involved in the retracted research, in an interview. “This is why the European Respiratory Society categorically excludes research manuscripts by the tobacco industry and industry-funded scientists.”

Jordt also said that while the “retraction doesn't necessarily say that the results are invalid,” transparently disclosing industry connections in research are essential to promoting public trust in science, which is important now more than ever.

“Many faculty at US universities start companies and provide expert and consulting services to industry, governments, non-profits and law firms,” said Jordt. “Declaring conflicts of interest is a measure to increase public trust in research.”

Three years before Texas experienced the largest forced power outages in American history, President Trump was warned by his own advisors that the US was in danger of experiencing a “catastrophic power outage” that would “outmatch” existing national plans and capabilities. Among the main culprits of this vulnerability, they argued, was an aging electricity grid heavily dependent on oil and natural gas. 

Blackouts that rolled across Texas last week left more than 4 million Americans without power for days at below freezing temperatures. The power outages also left millions without safe drinking water as water pumps and treatment plants went down. Dozens died as a result of the extreme cold. 

This crisis was not only foreseeable, but warned about repeatedly over many years. Its principal cause was not the shutdown of wind and solar power, as falsely claimed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Nor was it anything to do with the Biden administration’s Green New Deal, as Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy implied. 

Although the narrative of renewables bringing down the grid has whipsawed across conservative media outlets, the real vulnerabilities were explained in detail in a US government study commissioned by the Trump administration. The findings of this report had not yet been resurfaced since the Texas disaster until this article. 

The study, Surviving a Catastrophic Power Outage, was published by the President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) in 2018. Its core finding now seems unnervingly prescient: 

“After interviews with dozens of senior leaders and experts and an extensive review of studies and statutes, we found that existing national plans, response resources, and coordination strategies would be outmatched by a catastrophic power outage… that could leave large parts of the nation without power for weeks or months, and cause service failures in other sectors—including water and wastewater, communications, transportation, healthcare, and financial services—that are critical to public health and safety and our national and economic security.”  

The report urged the need for “significant public and private action” to prepare for this eventuality, including recommendations for all levels—federal, state, territories, cities and localities. Yet few if any of these recommendations were actually followed through. 

Although it mentioned a few examples of potential triggers for a catastrophic blackout, from natural disasters like wildfires to “cyber-physical” attacks, the report avoided direct discussion of what might cause such a crisis. 

Even so, the report nowhere mentions renewable energy as a potential reason for America’s growing vulnerability to blackouts. Instead, it devotes an entire section to vulnerabilities in the “Oil and Natural Gas Sector.” 

The report warned that “a break in the flow of electricity could disrupt the flow of gas when backup power runs out, which could cause further fuel interruptions. This growing interdependency creates risks of cascading, mutually-reinforcing failures across both the Electricity Subsector and Oil and Natural Gas Subsector.” 

It went on to describe this risk in considerable, almost excruciating detail, essentially highlighting that the fundamental danger was too much dependence on hydrocarbon energy sources:  

“Reliance on a single fuel creates the danger of ‘common mode failures’ where a lack of natural gas incapacitates multiple generators simultaneously, which could create power outages lasting a month or longer over multiple regions of the US.”  

In other words, the Texas blackout, unprecedented as it was, came nowhere near the scale of the worst-case scenarios identified in this document.

“During a catastrophic outage, on-site fuel supplies for emergency generators will quickly be depleted,” the report went on. “Massive, multi-sector requirements for fuel resupply would occur, and contractors responsible for resupply operations will likely be unable to meet these requirements.”  

It specifically gave New England as an example, noting that “it has a high reliance on natural gas supply and LNG imports to meet winter peak loads.” A limited number of pipelines and supporting gas infrastructure means that if even a single natural gas compressor station or other gas system facility is lost, this “would create recurring energy shortages that would cause frequent and long rolling blackouts.” 

A prolonged blackout could in turn disrupt supply chains, the report found. “Natural gas disruptions could also cause ripple effects across supply chains, whose corruption could pose significant challenges.”  

Especially vulnerable are water supplies, due to reciprocal and mutual interlinkages between water and energy, through mining, fuel production, hydropower, and power plant cooling. Noting that water pumping, treatment, and distribution needs energy (along with the discharging of wastewater), the document warned that a major driver of risk is the projected rise in water consumption by 50 percent from 2005 to 2030. The other problem is that thermal power plants used by fossil fuels are using increasing quantities of energy.  

“Without water services, factories shut down, hospitals close, communities are disrupted, and most hotels, restaurants, and businesses cease operations,” the report warned. “If water and wastewater systems failed in communities across multiple states or US regions, the societal consequences and risk to the lives and safety of affected populations would be difficult to overestimate.” 

The problem is that the Trump administration’s most important proposed solution to build resiliency was no solution at all. Central to its list of recommendations was the report’s myopic focus on ensuring that “all critical natural gas transmission pipeline infrastructure has the appropriate standards, design, and practices to continue service during a catastrophic power outage and maintain rapid availability.”  

Yet the document failed to address the underlying problems of an aging and outmoded industrial-era national grid that is no longer fit for purpose—incapable of withstanding the converging forces of rising demand and accelerating climate disasters. Which helps explain why utilities have done little to upgrade the ailing grid. 

That’s why what happened in Texas was unfortunately a taste of things to come on a business-as-usual trajectory. 

Seven years ago, I reported for Motherboard that “industrialized countries face a future of increasingly severe blackouts… due to the proliferation of extreme weather events, the transition to unconventional fossil fuels, and fragile national grids that cannot keep up with rocketing energy demand.” 

The prediction was based on a study published in the Journal of Urban Technology, whose authors professors Hugh Byrd and Steve Matthewman described blackouts as “dress rehearsals for the future in which they will appear with greater frequency and severity.” 

Since then, the data has borne out this grim prediction. Over the last decades, the US has experienced an increasing number and intensity of blackouts. There have been over 2,500 major outages since 2002, nearly half of which were caused by severe weather events. Put another way, there has been an overall 67 percent increase in weather-related blackouts since 2000, affecting two thirds of American states. 

Data from the US Energy Information Administration shows that since 2013, the average duration of power blackouts experienced by US citizens has increased by 300 percent, from two to nearly six hours by 2018. The US now suffers from 147 big blackouts a year, and rising. 

Texas is among the worst offenders, having experienced 105 blackouts over the last two decades, at increasing frequency. 

In the February 2020 crisis, the state’s own Electric Reliability Council confirmed that natural gas providers were the primary cause of the crisis. Nearly half the state’s gas production was shut down, along with at least one nuclear plant. Meanwhile, wind turbine failures accounted for just 13 percent of outages. In fact, thermal sources, such as coal, gas and nuclear lost nearly twice as much power due to the cold than renewable energy sources. 

And the crisis in Texas did not stay in Texas.  

Blackouts swept across Ohio, Mississippi and other states, and left 2.5 million without power in seven northern Mexican states. A third of US oil production ground to a halt, and vaccination efforts in 20 states were disrupted.

This sort of scenario involving a rolling series of power, water, and infrastructure crises triggered by extreme weather is consistent with the warnings of a separate report commissioned by the Pentagon in 2019. That document went so far as to warn that the US military itself might be at risk of collapsing in two decades under the strain of responding to complex domestic emergencies triggered by climate change.

In this context, the Texas blackouts are a dry-run for the severe costs of business-as-usual, pointing to the urgent need to invest in real alternatives.

Perhaps most ironic of all is the fact that the Trump administration had separately commissioned research which identifies the alternative.  

Another 2018 report published by the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) found that solar panels combined with battery storage could provide a more resilient power system to protect against blackouts than gas or diesel.  

“Diesel generators are often viewed as the default solution for providing resilient power, but they might not always be the most reliable or cost-effective solution,” the report stated. “Reliance on traditional fuel reduces an energy system’s resilience because a disruption or contamination in the fuel supply can cause vulnerabilities. Using solar power to charge on-site energy storage offers unique benefits that traditional diesel-fueled backup power systems cannot. As a result, solar technology combined with energy storage is increasingly being implemented in resilient power system designs.” 

The report concluded that as extreme weather and widespread power outages are increasingly revealing the limitations of traditional solutions, “more businesses and building owners are likely to consider the value of resilience and the viability of PV and storage to avoid outage-related losses.” 

But this hasn’t happened in Texas—where incumbent fossil dependent utilities hold sway, and appear unwilling to concede ground despite the horrific costs. 

The case to transition to a different energy and electric system, however, could not be stronger; especially when that case is inadvertently corroborated by multiple US government research studies commissioned under Trump.