Setu
Equitable energy transitions, regions of the global South and vulnerable communities globally.
- The Bandcamp app has gotten really great. Fun to rediscover the joy of collecting albums, slowly, again. dddriftingcloudsss.bandcamp.com/album/bawuyp...
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- Good decision :) I'm half way through. Gratuitous descriptions of tipping elements await.
- Call for abstracts - EGU 2026 session ITS3.6/ERE6.5 on justice and social science and humanities (SSH) integration in climate modelling. We invite work linking SSH and IAMs on justice, labour, needs, power, governance and Global South perspectives. Submit (by 15 Jan 2026) www.egu26.eu/session/57677
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- The status quo here in Australia. Sadly.
- Going backwards down a slippery slope - "To attempt to win over sceptical countries, diplomats are discussing options including covering a bigger share of the target with carbon credits..." www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
- Urbanization trends are reshaping human settlement patterns and energy needs. Our recent (open access) work, led by Jessica Kersey and Samuel Miles, explores these dynamics across countries in Sub-Saharan Africa 🧵
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View full threadOur analysis identifies critical regions where this ‘gap’ is most acute, notably coastal West Africa, Ethiopian highlands, and the Great Lakes region encompassing Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and the DRC.
- Institutional frameworks and electrification planning models will need to evolve beyond the rural-urban binary to keep pace with these urbanization dynamics. Check out the paper for more detail (open access) here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Least-cost electrification planning models typically rely on binary rural/urban delineation for demand estimation and sometimes for supply decisions. Such assumptions significantly influence technology choice, potentially misallocating resources by failing to capture emerging urbanization dynamics.
- Institutional responsibilities and regulatory frameworks also often remain rigidly divided between rural electrification agencies and urban governance bodies. This rigidity creates jurisdictional gaps, potentially leaving large peri-urban and newly urbanizing areas underserved.
- We combine the Urban Rural Catchment Area (URCA) framework with satellite derived spatial electrification datasets to highlight spatial patterns in electricity access gaps.
- We find that 62% of the unelectrified population lives within or near expanding urban areas, especially in peri-urban zones surrounding smaller and medium-sized cities. This questions the notion of the majority ‘rural unelectrified’ and the binary urban-rural delineation in electrification efforts.
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- "... [the] 1% and 0.1%, whose transboundary contributions to worsening local extremes arise primarily through investments, rather than consumption... ... [efforts] should also consider the shared responsibilities of governments to expedite systemic changes in financial and regulatory structures"
- Runaway inequalities are a fundamental challenge to meeting climate ambition. In a new study, we trace transboundary harms attributable to high wealth individuals worldwide - 🧵 by lead author @sarahschoengart.bsky.social 👇
- New study on linking wealth-based emissions to climate impacts: We find that 2/3 of global warming is attributable to the wealthiest 10% and so are climate extremes. Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41... @iiasa.ac.at, @usyseth.bsky.social 1/
- Read about our new work on 'net zero carbon debt' @carbonbrief.org 👇
- NEW – Guest post: How to apportion ‘net-zero carbon debt’ if global warming overshoots 1.5C | @setupelz.bsky.social @robinlamboll.bsky.social @wimthiery.bsky.social @gidden.bsky.social @cjsmith.be @shonali-p.bsky.social Read here:
- 📢 New paper w/ G. Ganti @robinlamboll.bsky.social L. Grant @cjsmith.be @shonali-p.bsky.social @joerirogelj.bsky.social K. Riahi @wimthiery.bsky.social @gidden.bsky.social We examine a forward-looking measure to guide collective efforts in the era of climate overshoot: net-zero carbon debt. 🧵
[This post could not be retrieved]- Oh, try this one: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
- On net-negative removals: we examine the physical implications of translating carbon debts into drawdown obligations. We find some evidence of long-term temperature equivalence, but.. high overshoot remains risky. See: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Avoiding the debt in the first place is better.
- In summary, we argue this measure can inform: — Domestic mitigation ambition — Global stocktakes — Climate finance & international cooperation We need fair, collective climate action now—before excessive overshoot makes that much harder. Read the paper here 👉 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- Second, we look beyond emissions accounting, to highlight the dual burden transferred to younger generations: 📉 Per-capita carbon drawdown obligations 🌡️ Years of life exposed to 1-in-100-year heatwaves These diverge sharply across regions and grow worse under a pessimistic current policy scenario.
- Every ton of excess CO₂ today is a ton that must be removed later. And every delay in mitigation worsens climate harms for younger generations. The net-zero carbon debt measure helps track responsibility for both of these issues, transparently. This can be useful at the domestic level.
- We illustrate this using the AR6 scenarios database: Some regions always accrue debt due to past emissions. Some if they delay net-zero CO2 until late this century. Some only if they push net-zero CO2 past 2100. Each case implies different responsibilities for drawdown—and for overshoot harms.
- We demonstrate the relevance of this measure for guiding contemporary climate action by applying it to two scenarios of possible futures: Current Policies (¬3C), and Announced Pledges (¬1.8C). First, we illustrate accrued debts and responsibility for overshoot in either case...
- Net-zero carbon debt compares a region’s cumulative CO₂ emissions (past + projected to net-zero) against its fair share of the 1.5°C budget. Any excess is debt: emissions that need to be drawn down later, making overshoot worse and harder to reverse. (for a discussion on fair shares - see link👇)
- Fairness has always been central to international climate talks, and its interpretation has been diverse, to say the least... Our new paper identifies key ‘entry points’ where crucial, often hidden, decisions are made that underlie fairness assertions in practice. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
- Considerations of fairness in mitigation efforts can get complicated (see earlier post), especially when we look beyond CO₂. In a new paper led by Mingyu Li, we propose an approach to address this, allocating a remaining 'global warming budget' to countries in line with the Paris Agreement’s goals.
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- Hi! We use remaining warming budgets (K) to 1.5C and 2C, which we only convert into CO2-we after the analysis is done, (using the TCRE). Remaining 2C CO2-we per capita budgets are provided under Suppl_data_2. You need to multiply these with populations in Suppl_data_1 you used and aggregate.
- Important new paper reconciling gender (in)equality along future socioeconomic scenarios - these underpin _a lot_ of climate change mitigation research. 🧵 by lead author @andrijevic.bsky.social 👇
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- Yes! Mingyu and @robinlamboll.bsky.social placed the replication archive and results here: zenodo.org/records/1472... - you will probably want to look at Supplementary data 2 and 3.
- We hope this helps others integrate non-CO₂ GHGs into fair budget assessments and motivates work on DADR paths and their implications for int. support. A final note: we explore but don’t fully tackle land-use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) emissions. That’ll be crucial for future work.
- This work was developed by prof. @joerirogelj.bsky.social and @robinlamboll.bsky.social and led by Mingyu Li at Imperial (with prof. Can Wang, at Tsinghua Unversity). Another important piece from their group and I'm very glad that I could contribute.
- We consider three principles: polluter pays, ability to pay, and beneficiary pays, and test how these shift each country’s ‘fair warming’ budget. We also look at different start years for accounting. No matter how you slice it, most developed countries end up with zero or -ve remaining budgets.
- Comparing our ‘fair warming’ budgets to deepest available domestic reduction (DADR) pathways shows that high domestic ambition is unlikely to be sufficient for many. This underscores a major challenge: the need to address expected breaches through international cooperation (more on this soon...).
- Why is this work necessary? Well, considering non-CO₂ emissions (like methane) builds a more accurate picture of each country’s warming contribution and enables a better comparison with future pathways. However, there are extensive debates on how to account for these gasses, which we navigate here.
- Fairness has always been central to international climate talks, and its interpretation has been diverse, to say the least... Our new paper identifies key ‘entry points’ where crucial, often hidden, decisions are made that underlie fairness assertions in practice. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
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View full threadThis work is only one small piece of the puzzle,and must be seen as embedded in broader assessments of domestic ambition and deliberations on corresponding international support implications, see e.g. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.....
- Finally, this was made possible with the collective and patient efforts of @gauravganti.bsky.social @joerirogelj.bsky.social and others not (yet) here.
- We use the case study to describe how a clear and transparent fairness assertion could be developed, which we hope invites (welcome!) critique. Also, check out the SI. It’s this critical examination, being upfront about principles and how we apply them, that is crucial.
- Ultimately, we hope our work supports policymakers, researchers, and civil society in developing and assessing ‘fair share’ assertions. We also note the possible use of this framework in other contexts, including in assessments of state compliance.
- The four common entry points we identify and discuss are: 1️⃣Foundational principles – which principles are important? 2️⃣Allocation quantity – what are we allocating exactly? 3️⃣Allocation approach – how is it shared out? 4️⃣Indicators – what data do we need? (and, what does this mean for all others).
- We explain why these are important, using examples from contemporary NDCs that mention fairness or equity but remain opaque in their operationalisations. To show their application in practice, we conduct a case study for the EU.
- Why this paper now? Recent guidance under the first Global Stocktake underscores that clarity on the “how” and “why” of each country’s fairness assertion is critical to clearly and transparently communicate. We expect to see NDC 3.0 submissions over the course of the year. unfccc.int/ndc-3.0
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- So like a climate science sister to econ’s TFP :)
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- Haha.. oh :(
- Does anyone have a list of all national (state-owned) oil and gas companies and the country to which they belong? Is this reasonably complete en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor... ?
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- Inspired to also plan a ‘reading December’. Heres a suggestion on your question: www.goodreads.com/en/book/show...
- Keeping 1.5C as a goal isn't fantastical, it's the only acceptable option. Moving goalposts allows indefinite broken promises. A fixed goal highlights urgent reality: every extra tonne of CO2 we emit will need to be removed to get back to that agreed level The longer we stall, the harder it gets.
- Climate action is falling terribly short Time to bury the 1.5C goal? Absolutely not - why the 1.5 goal must prevail (even when global warming exceeds 1.5C) My opinion for Project Syndicate 👇 www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a...
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- People outside of the international climate regime are listening intently too. Step into the world of LinkedIn corporate finfluencers and it’s clear why we have to hold some semblance of a line. The next step for many is straight to 2C (the next ‘feasible’ target). No responsibility, no worries.
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View full threadPretty interesting… They are saying: we believe it is fair and ambitious to do X. But, with finance, we could do X++, where that ++ finance is a result of a trade of ITMOs. Ie a trade resulting in further ‘overall mitigation of global emissions’, that go beyond what is fair and ambitious for Brazil.
- There’s a lot to unpack here. I guess I’d start with their definition of what fair and ambitious is, before game theory about art6 conditionalities… All this is occurring in front of the backdrop that rich historical emitters haven’t done their fair share by any measure, and need to address this.
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- Yes it is something like that but it came out of an earlier interpretation of ‘right to life’. I don’t know if this was tested in the US with similar freedom impingement complaints. The broader point is that these agreements do have legal weight, perhaps more so outside the US.
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- The judgement has constitutional law implications as relates to climate, but the court references India’s obligations under their NDCs to the PA (they also refer to the UNFCCC). For a better discussion, see: www.theindiaforum.in/climate-chan...
