Plastic production must be reduced by 12% to 17% per year to avoid catastrophic climate change

World leaders are meeting this month to negotiate production cuts in the Plastics Treaty

Berkeley, CA, USA– Ahead of the fourth round of United Nations negotiations on an international plastics treaty in Ottawa, April 23 to 29, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (LBNL) has published a groundbreaking study that reveals the enormous climate impact of plastic production. According to LBNL research, 75% of all greenhouse gas emissions from primary plastic production occur before the polymerization phase. This reinforces the importance of the treaty covering the entire life cycle of plastic, from extraction to disposal, as set out in the 175-nation agreement Resolution 5/14, which forms the basis for the treaty discussions.

Commenting on the report, Dr. Neil Tangri, director of science and policy at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), Dr. Jorge Emmanuel of Siliman University, Philippines, and Dr. Sam Adu-Kumi, former director of the Chemicals Control and Management Center of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Ghana, contextualized LBNL’s findings within the Paris Climate Agreement and the global carbon budget. GAIA calculations (which incorporate the data from the LBNL report):

● The impact of plastics on the climate starts with their extraction. To fully capture, measure, evaluate and address the impact of plastic pollution, assessment and regulatory controls must consider the full life cycle, starting with extraction.

● The growth of plastic production alone will undermine international climate goals. Even if every other source of greenhouse gas emissions – transportation, electricity, agriculture, heavy industry, etc. – were to miraculously and completely decarbonize by 2024, at current growth rates, primary plastic production alone would completely wipe out the global carbon budget by 2024. swallow up. 2060 and 2083 at the latest.

● The Paris Agreement requires deep, rapid cuts in plastic production. To avoid exceeding the 1.5°C limit of the Paris Climate Agreement, primary plastic production must decrease by at least 12% to 17% per year from 2024.

A major point of tension in the negotiations so far is whether to include ambitious and binding cuts in plastic production in the final treaty. The vast majority of countries involved in the negotiating process have remained open to including production reduction targets in the treaty. However, a small but vocal minority, mainly made up of fossil fuel producing countries, has tried to sabotage the talks using obstructionist tactics and claiming that plastic pollution only begins at the disposal stage. In light of LBNL’s new data, hindering this small group jeopardizes the world’s ability to decarbonize in time to avoid climate catastrophe.

The petrochemical industry itself has had a significant presence in the negotiations – 143 industry lobbyists have signed up to the INC-3, a larger group than any national delegation or civil society organization, and have been given extensive access to government representatives from around the world. world. Civil society is calling for them to be removed from further negotiations to avoid conflicts of interest.

Dr. Neil Tangri, Director of Science and Policy at GAIA and Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, said: “As world leaders try to negotiate a solution to the plastics crisis, the petrochemical industry is investing billions of dollars in fixing the problem. gets worse quickly. We need a global agreement to stop this cancerous growth, reduce plastic production and usher in a world with less plastic and less pollution.”

Dr. Sam Adu-Kumi, former Director of the Chemicals Control and Management Center of Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said: “Africa has been one of the most ambitious regions in plastics treaty negotiations. We recognize the impact of plastic pollution on the health, environment and livelihoods of our people and we know from experience that action upstream is needed to enable downstream success in the fight against plastic pollution.”

Dr. Jorge Emmanuel, Adjunct Professor and Research Faculty Fellow, Siliman University, Dumaguete, Philippines, said: “The Philippines is on the front lines of both climate change and plastic pollution. Heat waves, powerful typhoons and flooding are getting worse, and the petrochemical industry has replaced our traditional systems with mountains of plastic that are poisoning our communities. Whether the treaty includes cuts to plastic production is not just a policy debate. It’s a matter of survival.”

Remark:

Dr. Neil Tangri was an expert reviewer of the LBNL report and the conclusions quoted above are based on the data from that report. A full description of the methodology can be found below. A full policy brief revealing how this new data can be understood within the context of the Plastics Treaty negotiations will be available on Friday, April 19, 2024 at 7:00 am EST. To receive an embargoed copy of this report, please contact [email protected].

For more information about the upcoming negotiations on the Plastics Convention (INC-4), see our press kit.

Press Contacts: Claire Arkin, Global Communications Lead [email protected] | +1 973 444 4869

References:

1 Friedlingstein et al., “Global Carbon Budget 2020”; Friedlingstein et al., “Global Carbon Budget 2021”; Friedlingstein et al., “Global Carbon Budget 2022”; Friedlingstein et al., “Global Carbon Budget 2023.”

2 Lamboll et al., “Assessing the Size and Uncertainty of Remaining Carbon Budgets.”

3 Bachmann et al., “Towards circular plastics within planetary boundaries.”

4 Geyer, Jambeck, and Law, “Production, Use, and Fate of All Plastics Ever Made”; Desalegn and Tangl, “Banning versus Taxing, Evaluating the Potential Opportunities and Challenges of Plastic Products”; Shanmugam et al., “Polymer Recycling in Additive Manufacturing.”

Methodology:

Carbon budget: The IPCC estimated the remaining carbon budget at the end of 2019 at 400

Gt CO2 for a 67% chance of staying below 1.5°C, and 500 Gt CO2 for a 50% chance. We have updated these figures with annual carbon budgets from 2020 to 2023.1 A more recent analysis shows that the remaining carbon budget is ~30 Gt CO2 smaller than the IPCC estimates used in this policy paper.2 This would imply the need for even steeper production cuts . . An important caveat is that these figures only include carbon dioxide and not the other greenhouse gases. Given the current increase in methane emissions and concentrations in the atmosphere, this will certainly lead to an overestimation of the remaining carbon budget from the end of 2023. Allocating parts of the carbon budget to different sectors is a political rather than a scientific choice. For this calculation, we assume that the share of plastic in global emissions would remain constant at 5.3%, even though the contribution of plastic to the global economy is estimated at only 1.1%.3

Overshoot: Plastic production has grown between 3.1% and 4.4% per year since 2010, depending on data sources.4 Karali et al. chose a growth trajectory of 2.5% to 4%. We extrapolated the range of growth trajectories to find out when plastics would consume the entire remaining carbon budget. This makes the highly unrealistic assumption that no other greenhouse gas emissions occur during this period; it is done for illustrative purposes only.

Drawdown: For more realistic scenarios, we have calculated the required pace of drawdown, starting in 2024, if plastic production is to fit within the allocated carbon budget. The results depend firstly on the allocation of the carbon budget and secondly on the desired degree of security around achieving the 1.5°C target, as reflected in the IPCC’s probability estimate of achieving this target. reaches. We also added a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario based on continued growth without production cuts. The results of the highlighted scenarios can be found below: