Fwd: Deciphering our climate future

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Loretta Lohman

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May 19, 2026, 5:44:45 PM (3 days ago) May 19

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Climate skeptics from the US to Germany have seized on recent research as proof that global warming’s risks have been exaggerated. Today’s newsletter delves into the debate over RCP8.5, a worst-case projection that scientists have now ruled out. Meanwhile, BloombergNEF researchers have their own global warming forecast in this year’s New Energy Outlook and two big Chinese companies join forces on carbon credits.

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Science debate

By Eric Roston

It’s not often that scenarios used by scientists to anticipate the impacts of climate change get wide public attention. But a recent journal article on warming scenarios has provoked discussion globally, including in the White House.

US President Donald Trump, who has dismissed climate change as a hoax, exulted on social media Saturday that the paper phased out the worst-case scenario, known as RCP8.5. The United Nations “just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG!” he said.

Scientists, not the UN, are retiring RCP8.5 from use in future climate research; over the past decade it was a mainstay in landmark UN climate reports. But the end of the RCP8.5 era is the result not of errors, according to scientists, but of recent research on emissions pathways that have made the old worst-case scenario irrelevant.

“The statements are incorrect,” Detlef van Vuuren, a climate modeling expert at Utrecht University, said of Trump’s post. “RCP8.5 was not wrong.”

Instead, it has “become implausible,” van Vuuren and his co-authors wrote in the article, because of the world’s adoption of climate policies and the maturing of clean industries.

Solar panels at the Weesow-Willmersdorf solar park in Werneuchen, Germany, in 2022. Photographer: Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz/Bloomberg — Solar panels at the Weesow-Willmersdorf solar park in Werneuchen, Germany, in 2022.

Climate skeptics, in particular, have seized on the change as proof that global warming’s risks have been exaggerated. Trump’s broadside didn’t come out of nowhere: RCP8.5 has attracted enough criticism over the years to become a regular target on the political right, which views it as extreme and overblown. Getting rid of the scenario was stated as a goal in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report and in Trump’s May 2025 executive order “Restoring Gold Standard Science.”

But what it really proves, according to Germany’s Environment Ministry, is that climate policy works. “After all, when an emissions scenario is ruled out due to effective climate policy, it is because past climate policy has had an impact,” the ministry said in a statement.

RCP8.5 stands for “representative concentration pathway 8.5” and projects the potential impacts from a high level of global warming relative to several lower-warming scenarios. It was formally introduced in 2011 and rebooted in 2017, and has been used widely in scientific research. It was designed to be a low-probability, high-impact scenario.

Scientists run standardized emissions scenarios so they can meaningfully compare the output of their independent models. They can be thought of as storylines about how the world may change in the future — the rise or fall of greenhouse gas emissions, population, economic growth, and advancing technologies. They revisit and update them regularly.

Criticism of RCP8.5 first emerged nearly a decade ago, when a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia named Justin Ritchie found that RCP8.5 was infeasible because it assumed humanity would burn a mass of coal that basically doesn’t exist.

Thus commenced a years-long conversation that spilled out of research journals, into news, and finally into conservative talking points.

Future warming

1.8C

How much the world will warm by the end of the century if it reaches net-zero emissions by 2050, according to BNEF.

Funding gap

“Member governments must address an increasingly difficult financial situation.”

Inger Andersen

Executive director, United Nations Environment Programme

Andersen noted the budget challenge facing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the US withdraws from it and other climate bodies.

Electricity boom

By Akshat Rathi

The world’s hunger for electricity, as demand rises almost everywhere, will lead to solar becoming the dominant source of power early next decade, according to new analysis from BloombergNEF.

Surging demand from data centers, population growth, rising incomes and more battery-powered vehicles are all boosting demand for electricity, researchers wrote in BNEF’s annual New Energy Outlook on Tuesday. The report concludes that rapid electrification is set to accelerate the transition to clean energy.

“So far this decade, the world has suffered three substantial shocks to the energy system: the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and, most recently, the conflict in the Persian Gulf,” the analysts wrote. “Successive energy market shocks could be a boon for the energy transition as some countries look to decouple from imported fossil fuels and bolster their energy security.”

BNEF’s analysis is based on two potential future outcomes. The Economic Transition Scenario (ETS) is based on what is most likely to happen based on prevailing economic forces. The Net-Zero Scenarios (NZS) assumes climate policies are the main driver — in other words, it is underpinned by what governments have said they committed to at the Paris Agreement to lower emissions.

In the ETS, where green policies exist but governments aren’t prioritizing them, solar and wind power both continue to increase their share of the global power mix. Solar becomes the largest contributor in 2032, while wind becomes the second largest in 2034, both displacing coal which is currently at the top spot.

BNEF’s analysis, based on recent carbon emission trends, shows that the world is on track to miss the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement to keep global temperature rise below 1.5C from pre-industrial levels. Under the ETS, the planet will heat up 2.4C by 2050, with emissions from two of the three biggest polluters — India, Southeast Asia and Latin America — continuing to rise. China, the world’s biggest emitter, will see its emissions fall, after having peaked in 2025.

Even if the world reaches net-zero emissions by 2050, the projected warming by the end of the century is likely to be above 1.8C, higher than the 1.75C BNEF projected in 2024.

Carbon push

By Lili Pike and Alastair Marsh

Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., two of China’s most valuable companies, are joining a new initiative intended to bolster corporate demand in the slowing market for carbon credits.

The Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. signage at the Beijing Auto Show.

The technology giant and electric vehicle battery leader will collaborate with firms including Mitsubishi Corp., Vale SA and Osaka Gas Co. under the Action for a Resilient Climate Coalition, a Singapore-based nonprofit launched Tuesday. It aims to help drive the use of high-quality credits with a target for members to jointly buy at least 10 million metric tons by 2030.

Carbon credit purchases by corporate buyers were about 153.5 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent last year, the lowest total since 2020, amid concern about potential reputational risks due to greenwashing claims, according to BloombergNEF.

Demand has fallen further this year as energy companies focus on managing the impacts of the Iran war, BNEF said in a May 1 report.

“A lack of demand commitment for carbon credits generated from high-quality decarbonization projects is holding back investments into these carbon projects,” said Frederick Teo, chief executive officer of GenZero, a Temasek Holdings Pte.-based investor and a member of the new coalition.

Zero

Electricity Will Power a Globally Stable Era

This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi talks wars raging and supply chains blocked with Gerald Butts, chairman of the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group and former chief of staff to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In an era of political chaos, they discuss how investors and companies are responding to the energy shock.

Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.