Voices arguing that climate action is a waste of time are getting louder. Here’s why they are wrong

Optimism may be hard to come by but the evidence shows some progress on emissions is not just possible – it’s happening before our eyes

There is something of a reality check under way on the response to the climate crisis. It’s no secret that countries and corporations are far from living up to the goals set by international leaders at the landmark 2015 Paris agreement.

Unless there is a significant course correction, the ramifications will be far-reaching and often destructive. The second coming of Donald Trump and growing global instability has made a top-down injection of urgency at the pace needed harder to imagine. Optimism is harder to come by.

But that doesn’t mean nothing is happening.

It’s worth pointing this out because a narrative has started to take hold that renewable energy and other clean solutions have made little to no headway in displacing fossil fuels, and therefore are pointless. Fuelled by Tony Blair and the former US government adviser Daniel Yergin, and embraced by the fossil fuel industry and its lapdogs in the commentariat, it is used to attack zero emissions targets as a fool’s dream. In Australia, it is part of the backdrop as the Albanese government is lobbied over whether to set an ambitious emissions reduction target for 2035.

The reality, though, is more complicated. Here are some things worth considering if you hear climate action is pointless.

Clean energy is coming for fossil fuels

One line that has gained some traction this year is that the proportion of global energy supply from fossil fuels has barely moved over the past 35 years. The claim – bubbling away in the The Australian, on Sky News and on social media – goes that dirty fuels provided 85% of energy in 1990, and still provide 80% today.

So much for progress, right?

But the Bloomberg New Energy Finance founder and self-declared conservative Michael Liebreich points out that this ignores an important factor.

The percentages referred to by fossil fuel advocates are for primary energy – that is, raw coal, crude oil, gas, wood, sun or wind. They do not refer to useful energy – energy that has been converted into a transportable form, such as electricity or refined petroleum, delivered to a consumer and then used to light their house or move their car.

This useful energy is the more relevant measure. And the process of processing raw fossil fuels into useful energy is, in many cases, not particular efficient. More energy is lost in generating at a remote coal-fired power plant and transmitting it to a home than if solar, wind or hydro was used. Petrol cars require much more energy to travel a kilometre than an electric vehicle does.

If we acknowledge this and consider useful energy alone, Liebreich says the amount of energy provided by fossil fuels is not 80%, but about 68%.

This is obviously still too high. But it won’t stay at this level. Despite all the talk of new coal plants still being built, they are playing in the margins. The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that solar and wind will meet more than 90% of the global increase in electricity demand this year. Global generation from solar and wind energy is expected to increase by about 25%, from 4,000 terawatt-hours to more than 5,000. Next year it is expected to jump another 20%, past 6,000TWh.

The IEA projects that global renewable energy output – including solar, wind and hydro – will surpass coal output in either 2025 or 2026. For the first time in a century, the share of electricity coming from coal will have fallen to less than 33%.

Solar and wind will together be nearly 20% – up from 4% a decade ago.

A key question is if this growth in renewable energy will eventually reduce global fossil fuel use – as is necessary – or mostly just meet growing energy demand. Liebreich argues compellingly that fossil fuel use is set to fall. Using a simple model, he suggests it is likely to start falling in the 2040s and could be squeezed out of the system by about 2065.

That is not near fast enough to deliver the trajectory scientists say is needed to limit global heating since pre-industrialisation to 1.5C. But it is a well argued rejection of claims that a global transition isn’t possible.

China? It’s moving

With a population of 1.4 billion and having taken on a huge proportion of the world’s manufacturing, China is easily the world’s biggest direct national climate polluter, pumping out more than twice as much CO₂ as the second-placed US.

Its story is mixed, as always. But the data show it is changing. An analysis for Carbon Brief by China experts Qi Qin and Lauri Myllyvirta found that coal’s share of the country’s power generation fell from 73% in 2016 to 51% in June this year. This happened as it continued to build new coal plants for a simple reason – it doesn’t run them at anything like capacity.

A significant moment came earlier this year when China’s national emissions fell for the first time, dropping 1% in the first quarter compared with a year earlier. Beijing needs to do much more if it is to meet its commitment under the Paris deal. Its next five-year plan for economic development, due this year, will be crucial.

Dirty car sales are down

According to Our World in Data, global sales of internal combustion engine cars – which run solely on petrol or diesel – peaked in 2016 at 80.47m. Electric and plug-in hybrid car sales in that year were just 780,000.

Last year, sales of dirty cars were 62.05m, a 23% fall. Electric and plug-in hybrid car sales had increased to 17.5m.

Cover photo:  A windfarm in Tangshan, China. Earlier this year, China’s national emissions fell for the first time. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock