Rashaed Esson

Staff Writer 

#USA, September 29, 2023 – Dr. Irfaan Ali, Guyanese president informed that the global aim for Net Zero by 2050 is unrealistic due to the cost of transition and the pace of the financing commitment thus far.

He was speaking at the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly, providing  numerical data, which he shared with the other attending world leaders, as he backed up his reasoning.

Before going into intricate details, summing up the costs which led to his view of the unrealistic goal of net zero by 2050, President Ali brought forth what he described as “the critical question of a just, affordable and equitable transition.”

He starts, maintaining that Bloomberg, financial information, software and media firm Bloomberg, estimates that reaching the global net zero emissions status by 2050, roughly 26 years from now, would require annual investments that triple those of 2021, to $6.7 trillion annually.

Ali narrowed down his analysis and specifically referred to global temperature, now a major issue and worsening, saying that to limit its rise to less than two degrees Celsius, the [IEA] estimates that investments in the energy sector, on its own, would need to be increased by approximately 1 trillion dollars yearly.

In continuation, the Guyanese President referred to the issue of availability of electricity in developing countries, as close to 900 million people worldwide have no access to it, he says, adding that this is “against the backdrop of a widening financing gap in achieving the SDGs, one of which is for affordable and clean energy; another clear factor highlighting the unrealistic nature of reaching all the desired goals by 2050.

Ali further highlighted the money that would go “with adaptation alone, estimated at $160 to $340 billion by 2030 and $315 to $565 billion by 2050, he says, according to UNAP further bolster his point.

Moreover, with more than 90 countries, he says, committed to Net Zero emissions, achieving this goal would require even more changes than what are currently happening, adding that the IEA gauges that for it to be so by 2050, more than 85 percent of buildings “must be net zero carbon ready,” and over 90 percent heavy industrial production, must be low emissions and almost 70 percent electricity would need to be generated from solar [photovoltaic].

“Based on these targets, renewable share in the generation of electricity will have to increase from 29 percent in 2020, to 88 percent in 2050. Meanwhile, to remove carbon from the atmosphere, the world would need to simultaneously halt deforestation and increase tree cover, again two times faster by 2030.”

Considering this, he said by 2050, 7.6 gigatons of carbon will have to be captured and stored compared to 0.4 gigatons in 2020.

He then concluded with a powerful plethora of statistical info, doubling down on the unrealistic target the world has set.

“According to Mckenzie and Company, it would cost $375 trillion dollars, in cumulative spending on physical assets to transition to net zero by 2050.”

Firming up the point by the President of Guyana, that it is completely unrealistic that these even more monumental targets would be reached, when countries failed to achieve even lesser goals laid out since the Paris Accord, signed nearly a decade ago in 2015 by 196 nations.