CLIMATE SCENARIOS: 5 traps to avoid to keep global warming under 1.5°C

The document identifies five 'traps' in climate scenarios—including the omission of non-combustion emissions, reliance on unproven negative emissions technologies, and underestimation of renewable energy—that lead to warming above 2°C. It specifically criticizes the IEA's Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS) and NGFS 'representative' scenarios for facilitating continued fossil fuel expansion. The author calls for financial actors to phase out fossil fuel financing by 2040 in Europe and 2050 globally.

• Many climate scenarios omit approximately 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions by focusing only on CO2 from fossil fuel combustion, ignoring deforestation (10%), methane (15%), and nitrous oxide (6%).
• The International Energy Agency (IEA) and other scenarios often treat economic growth as an exogenous factor, ignoring the link between energy and growth and neglecting planetary limits like raw material supply.
• Scenarios frequently rely on unproven CO2 capture and storage (CCS) and biomass technologies to justify maintaining fossil fuel production, despite high costs and limited operational projects.
• The IEA structurally underestimates the share of renewable energies in the energy mix by using primary energy representations that bias fossil fuels and by underestimating the decline in renewable costs.
• The IEA's Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS) and the NGFS's central '2°C' scenario forecast massive continued investment in fossil fuels, with the SDS allowing over $15 trillion from 2019 to 2040 and the NGFS scenario projecting $25 trillion from 2020 to 2050.
• To align with a 1.5°C trajectory, financial players should phase out fossil fuel services by 2040 at the latest in Europe and 2050 elsewhere for oil and gas, and ten years earlier for coal.

APA

Schreiber, P., & Pinson, L. (2020). CLIMATE SCENARIOS: 5 traps to avoid to keep global warming under 1.5°C. Reclaim Finance. https://reclaimfinance.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Traps_Climate_Scenarios.pdf

Chicago

Schreiber, Paul, and Lucie Pinson. CLIMATE SCENARIOS: 5 traps to avoid to keep global warming under 1.5°C. Reclaim Finance, 2020. https://reclaimfinance.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Traps_Climate_Scenarios.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Schreiber |first1=Paul |last2=Pinson |first2=Lucie |title=CLIMATE SCENARIOS: 5 traps to avoid to keep global warming under 1.5°C |publisher=Reclaim Finance |date=October 2020 |url=https://reclaimfinance.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Traps_Climate_Scenarios.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{schreiber2020climate, author = {Schreiber, Paul and Pinson, Lucie}, title = {{CLIMATE SCENARIOS: 5 traps to avoid to keep global warming under 1.5°C}}, institution = {Reclaim Finance}, year = {2020}, month = oct, url = {https://reclaimfinance.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Traps_Climate_Scenarios.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }