In an article on the Le Monde website, Audrey Garric writes about the criticism of the IPCC from the historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz. According to Fressoz, the United Nations prioritises technological and sometimes ‘speculative’ solutions over restraint and other options, thereby delaying necessary structural changes.
IPCC faces criticism for favoring high-tech solutions to global warming
Is techno-solutionism only a characteristic of US tech magnates, such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates? According to some, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose alarming reports on the climate crisis carry global weight, also demonstrates a “technophile bias,” prioritizing technological solutions and innovation over restraint. This thesis is put forward by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, a historian of science and technology and columnist for Le Monde, in the September issue of the scientific journal Energy Research & Social Science.
Fressoz, a research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), examined the work and organization of the IPCC’s Working Group III. This group is responsible for evaluating solutions to climate change. Fressoz reached a startling conclusion: Achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 or 2070 through technological solutions that would limit the global temperature rise to 1.5°C or 2°C by the end of the century is “unattainable.”
In his view, scientists must acknowledge this because by maintaining the “illusion” of feasibility, they give visibility and legitimacy to “speculative” technologies, “narrow the range of viable policy options” and “delay” the structural transformations needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Since its first report in 1992, Working Group III has positioned technology as the “cornerstone” of the response to climate change, according to Fressoz, who traces the historical roots of this dominance. He illustrates this with keyword analysis of the reports, which reveals the “overwhelming dominance” of terms related to technological solutions (“technology,” “innovation,” “nuclear,” “solar,” etc.) compared to terms related to behavioral change (“lifestyles,” etc.).
‘Decisive role’ of the US
Although the earliest reports demonstrate the greatest imbalance, even the most recent ones (from 2014 and 2022) reference technology seven times more often than they reference issues of demand. For example, the latest report mentions “innovation” 1,667 times, which is seven times more than “restraint” (232) and “hydrogen” (1,096) and 38 times more than “degrowth” (29). The term “ban” appears only 13 times. Innovation is consistently portrayed positively, often as “responsible” or “low carbon,” even when discussing artificial intelligence and bitcoin, which consume significant amounts of electricity.
This sixth and latest report nonetheless marks a turning point: For the first time, it includes a chapter on demand, “presenting restraint as a legitimate and important mitigation strategy,” states Fressoz’s study.
“Why did it take 30 years of expertise before this issue received even somewhat serious treatment?” asked Fressoz. The IPCC’s role is to evaluate and synthesize knowledge on climate change, so its reports reflect the technophilia of the scientific literature on mitigation or reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The study asserts that research centers in this field “prioritize novelty and innovation” and that scientists are “strongly incentivized” to collaborate with industry.
The IPCC’s position at the intersection of science and policy has steered climate expertise toward technological solutions. According to the study, the United States played a “decisive role” in this through the first two chairs of Working Group III, who were both American: Frederick Bernthal and Robert Reinstein. Reinstein was openly skeptical about climate change. Their goal was to delay decarbonization to avoid changing lifestyles. For instance, the 1995 report states that “slowing the transition away from fossil fuels provides valuable time to develop low-cost, carbon-free alternatives.”
Breaking free from ‘misplaced optimism’
“There was no need to tighten our belts too much, because by the year 2000, nuclear breeder reactors would provide the real solution to the energy crisis,” explained Fressoz, author of Sans transition, Une nouvelle histoire de l’énergie (“Without transition: A new history of energy,” 2024, untranslated), quoting influential US economists of the time, such as William Nordhaus.
At the same time, the idea emerged that companies were best positioned to solve the problems they created. This resulted in employees from fossil fuel companies – which are the main causes of global warming – becoming authors for Working Group III of the IPCC. These included representatives of Total, Exxon, ENI and Saudi Aramco.
“It’s a minority, but it has played a significant role in promoting CCS [carbon capture and storage] technologies,” said Fressoz. These solutions entail capturing greenhouse gases at the point of production and storing them underground. They were developed and promoted by the fossil fuel industry to increase oil extraction. Initially critical, the IPCC published a special report in 2005 that was positive about CCS, largely based on industry-funded expertise.
Similarly, Working Group III played a “crucial” role, explained the historian, in legitimizing “negative emissions,” technologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. “From the 2000s onward, modelers incorporated massive and unrealistic levels of negative emissions into their scenarios to make carbon neutrality possible on paper and to motivate governments,” said Fressoz. “That was well-intentioned, but it led to perverse e!ects.” These included delaying action and directing public funding toward CCS and thus, in part, toward fossil fuels.
Fressoz, who rejects the label “technophobe,” acknowledges an energy transition in the electricity sector, which accounts for 40% of global emissions. There has also been a transition in buildings and land transport, though to a lesser extent. “Yet for sectors such as aviation, shipping, steel, cement, plastics, fertilizers, food production, construction and the military, the technological prospects for deep decarbonization remain speculative at best,” Fressoz said, adding that we have never consumed as much coal, oil or wood as we do now. Meanwhile, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise year after year. He argues that breaking free from “misplaced optimism” would open new avenues of research, such as the consequences of a decline in international tourism or a drastic reduction in meat consumption in high-income countries.
‘Incorporating development and ethical issues’
“Technology has indeed had a lot of coverage in IPCC reports, reflecting underlying literature. But Working III (mitigation) sectoral chapters, on buildings or transport, cover both technology and behavioural aspects,” said Jim Skea, chair of the IPCC since 2023 and co-chair of Working Group III for the sixth report, in response to Fressoz’s article.
Other experts interviewed by Le Monde praised the “useful” work. Kari De Pryck, a lecturer and researcher at the University of Geneva and author of GIEC: La Voix du Climat (“IPCC: The Voice ofClimate,” 2022, untranslated), agreed with Fressoz’s assessment that the organization presents itself as neutral, yet it “has enormous power in setting the agenda on certain issues,” especially in Working Group III.
“For a long time, an overwhelming majority of authors were economists from developed countries who thought technology would solve the climate problem,” said Youba Sokona of Mali, former co- chair of Working Group III for the fifth report and former vice president of the IPCC. “We fought to incorporate development and ethical issues and to bring sociologists and philosophers into Working Group III, but there is still an imbalance.”
Questions of restraint and degrowth are di”cult to address, partly because they are “inaudible for many governments, especially those in the Global South that have not achieved a decent standard of living. These are very Western notions,” said Nadia Maïzi, one of the authors of the demand chapter in the sixth IPCC report. She regrets that Fressoz’s quantitative analysis is not accompanied by the qualitative elements provided in the report. Are these technologies viewed positively by the IPCC, or are they considered more or less plausible?
According to paleoclimatologist Valérie Masson-Delmotte, former co-chair of Working Group I (on the physical science basis of climate change), Fressoz does not demonstrate that carbon neutrality is unattainable. She believes that restraint “has its limits” and that, as a last resort, we will still need technology to decarbonize sectors such as heavy industry. This topic is sure to spark debate in the newly appointed Working Group III of the IPCC, which is expected to release its seventh report by the end of the decade.
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