The study systematically analyses all shifts in the use of coal, gas and oil in 100 countries over the last 60 years. Surprisingly, researchers find 147 cases when a fossil fuel declined by more than 5% of the total electricy supply over a decade. Researchers zoom in on the 43 most significant cases in large countries and compare these to what needs to happen in Asia to attain the climate targets.

They discover that while about one-half of 1.5°C scenarios envision historically un-precedented coal decline, the other half has similarities to what happened in Western Europe and Japan in the 1970s and 1980s, when the use of oil in power production was substituted largely by nuclear power. Researchers show how policy lessons of this past decarnobisation in rapidly growing state-led electricity systems can be useful for reaching climate targets.

Read the OpenAccess article in OneEarth: Vinichenko, V., Cherp, A. & Jewell, J. Historical precedents and feasibility of rapid coal and gas decline required for the 1.5°C target. One Earth 4, 1477–1490 (2021) or a Twitter thread explaining it’s findings.