Scorched Europe: Can Renewable Energy Save Us?

 

Figure from Ballester et Al. 2023 showing the average summer temperatures in several Western European States. The situation is rapidly becoming dramatic, and renewables will be desperately needed not just as a replacement for fossil fuels but as a tool for adaptation. 

This July has seen the highest temperatures ever recorded in Europe and worldwide. It is not an exceptional event but part of a trend. Take a look at the graph above; there is no other way to define it than scary. If the trend of the past 10 years is maintained, then the average summer temperature in Europe will keep rising by about 0.14 °C every year. It means one more degree by 2030 and three additional degrees by 2050. And it could be much worse: the authors of the paper interpreted the growth as linear, but these complex systems tend to go exponentially. Maybe the temperature increase could start tapering down, too. But it is safe to assume that the trend will continue and Southern Europe will be especially hit. "Scorched Europe"? Yes. 

Plenty of people find these data surprising. Most have in mind the "1.1 °C" increase normally mentioned when dealing with global warming. But that's a global average of land and sea temperatures, and the sea warms less than the land mainly because it has a larger heat capacity. The summer temperatures on land are another story and are what kills people when they appear in the form of heat waves. Last summer, we had 60,000 excess deaths in Southern Europe correlated to the heat waves. This summer, things seem to be a little better, but how about a future with four extra degrees of warming? And it is not just a question of heat waves: the changes in the ecosystems are going to be profound and irreversible. We may expect drought, desertification, land erosion, and extreme meteorological events. 

The standard wisdom is that we can stop climate change by phasing out the consumption of fossil fuels and hence CO2 emissions. It could be obtained by better efficiency, energy saving, and the diffusion of renewable energy (nuclear energy could also be used, although with many additional problems). It is possible, but could it be done fast enough? Let's see a projection from the recent report to the Club of Rome "Earth for All," a global modeling of the world's economic system. 

You see the energy transition in terms of the phasing out of CO2 emissions. In the "Giant Leap" scenario, the transition is completed by 2050. You can see similar scenarios, although more detailed, in the IPCC reports. Even the most optimistic projections do not see the disappearance of fossil fuel use before 2050-2060.

Now, what would be the effects on global temperatures of phasing out fossil fuels by 2050? The "Earth for All" study models that, too. (the IPCC scenarios provide similar results): 

You see that there is not such a big difference between the two scenarios. Even after that fossil fuel consumption has been brought to zero, in 2050, temperatures keep rising for more than 30 years. It is expected. Reducing or even zeroing emissions does not remove CO2 from the atmosphere; it only stops its concentration from increasing. The system has a certain time lag that keeps it warming even though emissions have become zero. For this reason, most of the IPCC scenarios assume the use of carbon sequestration technologies to be deployed after 2050, even though nobody knows for sure how these technologies could work. Note also that these calculations do not take into account the possibility of "tipping points" that could unbalance the system and cause drastic, rapid, and irreversible changes.  

The point is that if the ratio of European temperatures to global temperatures is maintained at the current values, a global increase of more than 2 degrees corresponds to about 4 degrees more on land in Europe. So, even with optimistic assumptions, it seems that a rapid transition away from fossil fuels can't prevent radical changes in the climate system. 

Does that mean renewables are useless? Not at all. Renewables, so far, have been considered mainly as a tool for mitigation of global warming. That is, as tools to reduce and eventually eliminate CO2 emissions. But we'll also need renewables as adaptation tools. At this point, it is clear that we need energy in order to survive. 

In the future, Southern Europe may well become an environment comparable to the present one in places such as Dubai, where the average daily summer temperature is about 34 °C. Residents say that there are only three seasons in Dubai: spring, summer, and hell. In summer, people live in air-conditioned homes and move in air-conditioned vehicles to reach air-conditioned spaces for work or for social activities. They drink desalinated water and consume imported food, or food cultivated in irrigated areas. It is perfectly possible to cultivate the Arabian desert, provided that the land can be irrigated, and that requires energy.

Can Southern Europe adopt similar strategies? Yes, but that needs energy. Dubai has an ample supply of low-cost fossil fuels from the neighboring countries, sufficient to create the artificial environments that keep people alive during the summer. They are moving toward renewables, but they are starting from very low levels. In Europe, instead, the fossil fuel supply is limited and expensive, but renewables are already covering a large fraction of consumption (more than 20%). This supply can be gradually increased to support adaptation. We need air-conditioned spaces for people in summer, we need to manage the land to avoid erosion and desertification, to reforest degraded areas, to create water reservoirs, and more. We may need to use renewable-powered precision fermentation to provide food independently of agriculture. 

The renewable-based mitigation scenario is a likely path that the warming-stricken regions may gradually follow, perhaps unwillingly but forced to by the circumstances. People will desperately want air-conditioning even though they keep screaming that global warming does not exist or that "climate always changes." Of course, there are various forms that this strategy may take, and it may be accompanied by massive migration toward Northern Countries and by attempts to drastically draw down CO2 from the atmosphere. Both would require huge amounts of energy. 

At present, these scenarios are politically taboo in the discussion in Europe. Most people in the region seem to ignore or deny the very existence of global warming or to consider it nothing more than a minor nuisance. That may slow down the efforts to mitigate it or to adapt to it. Eventually, though, change is unavoidable. Obviously, nobody likes the idea of Italy looking like Dubai a few decades from now, but it could be much worse.