It is a useful paper and provides some interesting numbers, but it is a bit unclear whether parts of the discussion are referring to reserves or resources – I think it is mainly the former. The confusion arises in that once a defined reserve is no longer mineable for economic or social or environmental reasons, then by definition, it becomes an unmineable resource! This is not unusual in that reserves vary with the value of the product, the cost of extracting the commodity, technology developments etc.

The paper usefully points out what we need to do; what it does not do is consider the potential impact of technologies. The most obvious one is carbon capture and storage; the other one is the production of blue hydrogen, along with CCS. Together these could result in a very different outlook especially for gas, but perhaps coal.

Humanity is not running out of coal, oil or gas; instead we are running out of options for the waste product carbon dioxide. This study is a reminder of just how little room there is for the continued use of fossil fuels, if the world is to succeed in limiting global warming to levels that might be safe.This is not a new insight, with shrinking carbon budgets having been computed for many years.

What this study shows is the comparison between the known reserves of fossil fuels and the amounts that could still be burned. The picture is stark in particular for the major coal producers including Australia, where most coal deposits will need to remain untouched. And this is largely out of the hands of the fossil fuel producing countries. How much coal will still be exported from Australia depends on how quickly importing countries move to clean energy. When demand falls, competition between remaining fossil fuel suppliers will drive down prices. Therefore the days of highly profitable fossil fuel industries will be over long before the use of coal, oil and gas peters out.

Fossil fuel producing countries need to prepare for the inevitable decline of these industries. That means investing in alternative industries, including clean energy. Australia has abundant opportunities for economic prosperity, including from a practically unlimited supply of low-cost renewable energy. That is where the future of energy lies.

The global transition of the energy system from fossil fuels to low- or no-emissions sources will have significant effects on the regional communities with economies buoyed by the fossil fuel sector. Transitional support for the fossil fuel sector workers within the communities, as well as the communities more broadly, is essential. Transition planning is most successful when it is proactive rather than reactive, and led locally in line with local values and priorities rather than imposed from outside.

The new study by Welsby et al. highlights the need for an open and honest discussion in Australia about equipping our regional production communities to thrive in a future that is changed as a result of global energy transition. This involves identifying and realising the positive opportunities for regional production communities, as well as putting in place measures to mitigate negative impacts.

The results in this new paper reinforce those found in the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees: that for scenarios of keeping to 1.5°C, the use of coal has to almost go to zero by 2050 and that gas and oil use have to be curtailed very substantially as well, leaving large reserves underground.

This new research, however, does illustrate the differential impacts this will have across countries – and the result is not great for Australian coal mining companies. This study in particular reinforces the nature of the urgent action identified by the recent IPCC Working Group 1 report – that we have very few years to markedly reduce our fossil-fuel emissions if we are to keep global temperatures to within 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Time is not on our side.

One implication of this report is that we should stop talking about “fossil fuels” and “renewable energy”. These terms arose in the 1970s when the main concern was that the world might run out of carbon-based fuels like oil, gas and coal.

Now our concern is that we have already discovered more of these fuels than we can safely use. Coal is the most dangerous because it creates deadly particulate pollution when it is burned, as well as emitting carbon dioxide. Methane gas, a hydrocarbon emits less carbon dioxide when it is burned, but is itself a potent greenhouse gas. We need to replace them with clean carbon-free energy sources including solar, wind, and hydroelectricity. The fact that these sources are renewable is welcome, since it implies that they provide a long-term solution, but not the primary reason we need them.

The results of this study are unambiguous — ongoing fossil fuel extraction and burning will deny us any chance of a safe climate future.  

Governments, business and industry thus need to properly account for the actual cost of burning carbon — and those costs make coal and other fossil fuels unviable for the foreseeable future.

This new research refines and emphasises what we have known for a long time: to avoid catastrophic climate change, most of the known fossil fuels will have to be left in the ground. That is one form of carbon capture and storage that has been proven to work! Calculations of the global carbon budget shortly after the 2015 Paris climate change conference showed nearly 90 per cent of known coal resources, 50 per cent of the gas and 35 per cent of the oil would need to stay where they are. The more recent research sets new, stronger benchmarks. 

It demonstrates that it is criminally irresponsible to propose opening new coal mines or gas fields. It is not just the Adani mine that should be abandoned, but the entire ill-conceived idea of mining the Galilee Basin. In similar terms, there can be no rational defence of the current Commonwealth government’s ludicrous proposal to spend more than $20 million of tax-payers’ money subsidising the development of the Beetaloo gas field. Its exploitation would either contribute to the acceleration of climate change or, in the more probable case of the world responding to the crisis we now face, be a complete waste of money.

The new Nature paper demonstrates the extreme disconnect between the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C, and current Australian policies. The paper estimates the proportion of fossil fuel reserves that will need to remain unexploited (in the ground) indefinitely in order to achieve a 50 per cent probability of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.

It finds that for Australia, roughly 95 per cent of coal, 31 per cent of fossil methane gas and 40 per cent of oil reserves would need to remain unextracted. By contrast, current Australian policies are geared toward supporting continued fossil fuel exports. Australia’s Department of Industry anticipates for continuing growth in exports of both metallurgical and thermal coal in the coming years (thermal coal exports are tipped to reach 212 million tonnes by 2022–23).