Net Zero: Hype Versus Reality
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By: HE Haitham Al Ghais, OPEC Secretary General
February 12, 2025 Hour: 12:08 pm
Net zero means achieving a balance between the emissions that humans emit into the atmosphere and those that are removed.
Ask a room full of people what ‘net zero’ means, and regardless of occupation, nationality, or age, you will likely hear a range of vague or uncertain answers. In boardrooms, classrooms, and living rooms alike, the term is often accompanied by targets or timelines that lack a clear grasp of what meeting them will truly entail.
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Against this backdrop, it may not come as a surprise that a UK government survey published in July 2024 found that 91% of respondents had heard of net zero, but only 17% knew a lot about it. Many surveys elsewhere show similar results.
This lack of understanding is striking, given that the Net Zero Stocktake 2024 found that 148 countries had national-level, net-zero targets covering 88% of the global population. This uncertainty raises a fundamental question: what is net zero, and – equally important – what is it not?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines net zero as when anthropogenic emissions are balanced globally by anthropogenic removals over a specified period. Simply put, net zero means achieving a balance between the emissions that humans emit into the atmosphere and those that are removed. It does not mean achieving an emissions-free world, demonizing hydrocarbons, or shunning emerging technologies like carbon capture utilization and storage or direct air capture.
It is also worth noting that the 2015 Paris Agreement does not mention net zero. Article 2 aims to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels,” while Article 4.1 calls for balancing emissions and removals in the second half of this century, “on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.”
Three years later, the concept of net zero gained prominence with the IPCC’s 2018 Special Report on 1.5°C, which stressed that halting long-term global warming requires reaching and sustaining net-zero emissions, and in 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published its Net Zero by 2050 – A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector report.
However, this rising prominence coincided with mounting confusion. Many net-zero policies promoted unrealistic timelines or had little regard for energy security, affordability or feasibility. For example, an article from The Economist in November 2024 said that estimates for ‘transitioning’ ranged between $3 trillion and $12 trillion per year.
Other policies disregarded material constraints, such as the clear difficulty of scaling up critical mineral production, or jeopardized the right of billions of people living in energy poverty in the developing world to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy, as per Sustainable Development Goal 7.
Initial net-zero policies were also often accompanied by calls to stop investing in oil, gas and coal, with scant regard for how this would impact energy security, given that these energy sources continue to make up over 80% of the global energy mix in 2025, as they have since the 1980s.
OPEC estimates a huge oil market deficit of 23 million barrels per day (mb/d) by 2030 if investment in the global upstream industry stopped today. The ensuing volatility would severely hamper key sectors like transportation, emergency services, construction, manufacturing, food production, healthcare and infrastructure, to name but a few.
Suffice to say, net zero does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a world where we expect global oil demand to exceed 104 mb/d this quarter – a new record ¬– amid expected growth of 1.4 mb/d in 2025. It exists in a world where global natural gas consumption reached “an all-time high” in 2024, according to the IEA, and it exists in a world where the same agency, despite predicting a peak in coal demand in 2014, recently reported record coal consumption of 8.7 billion tonnes in 2024.
Moreover, by 2050, we see global energy demand rising by 24%, the global economy more than doubling in size and the global population reaching 9.7 billion.
Oversimplified narratives framing renewables as ‘good’ and hydrocarbons as ‘bad’ in the name of net zero underline why real-world data and forecasting – not ideology – should drive policy formation, including when it comes to net zero and future energy pathways.
This does not mean that OPEC does not support reductions in emissions – far from it. In fact, the Financial Times has recently reported that the Middle East is now the fastest-growing renewables market outside China, with the UAE’s Masdar, Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power and other OPEC countries leading the way. It is equally true that these efforts complement, rather than contradict, the vital contributions of OPEC Member Countries and their national oil companies to maintain energy security, affordability and reduce emissions.
OPEC recognizes that addressing the world’s current and future energy challenges requires massive investment in all fuels and technologies. In this respect, our Member Countries are showing that it is possible to be leaders in renewables and hubs for technological development while producing the oil the world needs now and long into the future.
Ultimately, talk of net zero does not need to be vague or uncertain, but neither can it afford to ignore all real-world data and trends. In a recent paper, the National Center for Energy Analytics underscores the risks of doing so when noting that ‘flawed assumptions about energy scenarios… influence not only trillions of dollars in investment decisions but also government policies with far-reaching geopolitical consequences.”
Encouragingly, recent years have seen policymakers once again recognizing the need to deliver both energy security and emissions reductions. However, our energy future still demands considerable pragmatism. This means investing in renewables and technologies while also recognizing and safeguarding the vital role of hydrocarbons in underpinning key sectors and livelihoods worldwide. If policymakers embrace this balanced approach towards net zero, the next decade will not only deliver meaningful emissions reductions, it will also ensure a stable and secure energy future for us all.
Autor: HE Haitham Al Ghais, OPEC Secretary General
Fuente: OPEC
The opinions expressed in this section do not necessarily represent those of teleSUR