Does the IPCC report change anything?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published its sixth assessment report (AR6). The latest IPCC report underlines the scale of the challenge ahead and adds impetus to political action and social pressure, but doesn’t change the destination toward which we are heading.

What we’ve learned from the report

The updated analysis leaves no doubt in the scale of the threat ahead. The IPCC has helpfully underlined the consequences of inaction. More physical damage is unavoidable; in any of the scenarios it paints, temperatures will rise 1.5°C in the 2030s. 

If emissions are cut through 2050, temperatures will fall later in the century, but initial increases – the results of lags between emissions and temperature rises – are inevitable. Without action to cut emissions in coming decades, temperatures will rise by up to 4°C over that historical baseline before the end of the 20^th century.

What this means

While the difference between 1.5°C and 4.0°C might sound minor, the human consequences are not.  A 1.5°C temperature rise will lead to 2.4 times more frequent droughts and a 1.5 times increase in extreme precipitation. At 4°C, those risks roughly double to 5.1 times and 2.8 times higher frequencies, at which point many parts of the world will become uninhabitable, mass migration becomes unavoidable and the economic impacts will be severe. Those warnings may provide the catalyst governments still need to coordinate ambitious and comprehensive action to reach net zero emissions by the middle of the century. 

What needs to be done

Reaching that goal will require halving global emissions over the next decade, or 6-7% annual reductions. While possible, that scenario is highly optimistic unless significantly more aggressive steps are taken.

To date, governments representing over 70% of the world’s emissions and economic output have established national net zero targets, and green infrastructure spending commitments may tally to ~$2 trillion over the next decade, with the vast majority of funding expected from private sources.

Despite this ambition, much of the hard work on delivering on these pledges is still to come and will rely heavily on technological advancements for those harder-to-abate sectors: the IEA anticipates that close to half of the CO2 emissions savings beyond 2030 will come from technologies that are still under development.

Companies must do more

Companies have started to follow suit but have further to go. Companies representing around 15% of the value of global equity markets have committed to reducing emissions quickly enough to limit long run temperature rises to 1.5°C, based on our analysis of companies setting goals through the Science Based Target initiative.

Investment in clean technologies and new growth products is similarly rising, but too often remains siloed in discrete product categories rather than targeting wholesale redesign of their entire product range. 

Given the scale of change required, whether the global economy will deliver a net zero transition in the next three decades is debatable. But the timing is the key question, not the imperative of a transition. Less ambitious goals to limit long run temperature rises to around 2°C will stretch the process out by a few decades but don’t alter the need to reach net zero emissions or the imperative for action. 

Earlier this year, we committed to setting a Science Based Target and are finalising its details. We have also joined other asset managers to urge political leaders to step up their climate ambitions. More importantly, we are defining the path we will take to get there and ensuring we are as equipped as possible to manage the risks and seize the opportunities facing the investments we manage for our clients.