If we want to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5°C, it is essential to drastically reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions into the atmosphere. This would imply not exploiting most of the energy resources of coal, conventional gas and oil existing in regions around the planet, according to research led by the University of Barcelona and published in the journal Nature Communications. The new article presents the atlas of non-extractable oil in the world, a world map designed with environmental and social criteria that warns of which oil resources should not be exploited in the world to comply with the commitments of the Paris Agreement signed in 2015 to mitigate the effects of climate change.
The article is directed by Professor Martí Orta-Martínez, from the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona, and has as co-authors Gorka Muñoa and Guillem Rius-Taberner (UB-IRBio ), Lorenzo Pellegrini and Murat Arsel, from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (Netherlands), and Carlos Mena, from the University of San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador).
The atlas of non-extractable oil reveals that to limit global warming to 1.5 °C it is essential to avoid the exploitation of oil resources in the most socio-environmentally sensitive areas of the planet, such as protected natural areas, priority areas for the conservation of biodiversity, points of high richness of endemic species, urban areas and the territories of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. Furthermore, it warns that the non-extraction of oil resources in these most sensitive areas would not be enough to keep global warming below 1.5 °C as indicated in the Paris Agreement.
Exclusion zones for oil exploitation throughout the planet
The Paris Agreement is an international climate change treaty that calls for limiting global warming to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. It was signed by 196 countries on December 12, 2015 within the framework of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change COP21, in Paris, and has been in force since November 4, 2016.
In this context, the non-extractable oil atlas provides a new roadmap to complement the demands of international climate policy – fundamentally based on the demand for fossil fuels – and enhance socio-environmental guarantees in the exploitation of energy resources.
«Our work reveals which oil resources should be kept underground and without commercial exploitation, with special attention to those deposits that overlap areas of high endemism richness or coincide with prominent socio-environmental values in different regions of the planet. The results show that the exploitation of the selected resources and reserves is totally incompatible with the achievement of the commitments of the Paris Agreement," explains Professor Martí Orta-Martínez.
Currently, there is a broad consensus among the scientific community to limit global warming to 1.5 °C if we want to avoid reaching what are known as tipping points of the Earth's climate system, such as the thawing of permafrost, the loss of ice Arctic marine and the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, forest fires in boreal forests, etc. "If these thresholds are exceeded, it could cause a sudden emission of carbon into the atmosphere (climate feedback)," continues Orta-Martínez. "This would amplify the effects of climate change and trigger a cascade of effects that commit the world to large-scale, irreversible changes."
What would happen if all known fossil fuels were burned?
To limit average global warming to 1.5°C, the total amount of CO₂ emissions that must not be exceeded is known as the remaining carbon budget. In January 2023, the remaining carbon budget for the 50% chance of keeping warming at 1.5°C was about 250 gigatonnes of CO₂ (GtCO2). "This budget is continually reduced with the current rates of emissions of human origin - about 42 GtCO2 per year - and will be completely exhausted in 2028," says researcher Lorenzo Pellegrini.
Combustion of the world's known fossil fuel resources would result in the emission of around 10,000 GtCO2, forty times more than the 1.5°C carbon budget. "In addition, the combustion of developed reserves of fossil fuels - that is, those reserves of oil and gas fields and coal mines currently in production or construction - will emit 936 GtCO2, four times more than the remaining carbon budget for a global warming of 1.5 °C,” says expert Gorka Muñoa.
«The objective of not exceeding 1.5 °C global warming requires completely stopping exploration for the discovery of new fossil fuel deposits, stopping the granting of new fossil fuel extraction licenses, and prematurely closing a very significant part ( 75%) of oil, gas and coal extraction projects currently in production or already developed," the authors point out.
With the perspective of the results of the work, which has received funding from the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Next Generation funds of the European Union, the authors call for urgent action by governments, corporations, citizens and large investors - such as pension funds—to immediately stop any investment in the fossil fuel industry and infrastructure if socio-environmental criteria are not applied. “Massive investment in clean energy sources is necessary to ensure global energy demand, enact and support moratoriums and bans on fossil fuel exploration and extraction, and adhere to the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty,” the team concludes.
