New modelling predicts heat deaths from fossil fuel projects

The first-of-its-kind Australian study has quantified the direct effects of carbon emissions from specific fossil fuel projects.

The study focuses on the Scarborough project, a new fossil fuel site approved for development off Western Australia’s coast. It estimates that Scarborough will contribute 876 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions over the course of its lifetime.

Dire consequences

According to the study, forecast emissions from the Scarborough project – with liquified natural gas production from the site expected to start in 2026 and continue for at least the next 31 years – will cause, on average, 0.00039°C of additional global warming.   

The researchers argue that although this level of additional warming may seem small on paper, it would have major consequences for Australia and the world. 

According to the study’s authors, 0.00039°C of additional global warming would: 

• Expose an additional 516,000 people around the world to unprecedented heat
• Leave an additional 356,000 people globally outside the human climate niche (this is defined as the climate conditions in which human societies have historically thrived and is defined by the distribution of the human population with respect to mean annual temperature)
• Cause 484 heat-related deaths in Europe by the end of this century 
• Cause additional thermal exposure in the Great Barrier Reef that would result in 16 million coral colonies lost in every future mass bleaching event. 

Measuring the unmeasurable

Professor Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick from ANU is one of the study’s co-authors. She says the new research dispels the myth that individual fossil fuel projects have a “negligible” impact on global emissions.

“The majority of Australia’s new fossil fuel projects describe their anticipated greenhouse gas outputs as ‘negligible’ in the context of global emissions and claim they’re unable to measure contributions to global warming, while also ignoring expected impacts,” Perkins-Kirkpatrick says. 

“The site’s developers claim it is not possible to link greenhouse gas emissions from Scarborough with climate change or any particular climate-related impact given that the estimated emissions associated with Scarborough are negligible in the context of existing and future predicted global greenhouse gas concentrations. 

“But our research shows emissions output from this new project is far from negligible.”

The researchers calculated that by 2049, the anticipated Australian emissions from the Scarborough project alone will comprise 49% of Australia’s entire annual CO₂ emissions budget. 

Co-author Dr Nicola Maher, also from ANU, says that beyond 2050, all emissions from the Scarborough project would require durable CO₂ removal from the atmosphere if Australia is to meet its emissions reduction targets. 

“That would require a huge increase in the effectiveness and scale of carbon capture and storage technology,” Maher says. “For example, in 2023, human activities to move carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into storage amounted to only 0.04 million tonnes of carbon dioxide globally, which is equivalent to just 0.6% of the planned annual Australian emissions from the Scarborough project.” 

Maher says the research provides a science-based foundation that can be employed by companies and governments to quantify the consequences of fossil fuel production and use and assess whether projects fall within acceptable levels of environmental and societal risk. 

The researchers employed a robust methodology known as the Transient Climate Response to CO₂ Emissions (TCRE) to calculate the contribution of these emissions to global warming. The TCRE is a major tool of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and works using a combination of our scientific understanding of the earth system, direct observations, and climate model simulations. 

Carbon records tumbling

The report coincides with the release of a study by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) finding that CO₂ from human activities increased by a record amount from 2023 to 2024.

The report found that, from 2023 to 2024, the global average concentration of CO₂ surged by 3.5 parts per million (ppm), the largest increase since modern measurements started in 1957.

Researchers attribute the increase to three factors:

• A significant increase in wildfires
• Reduction in the effectiveness of absorption by “carbon sinks” such as forests and the ocean
• Continued use of fossil fuels.

To put the increase into context, the study found that growth rates of CO₂ have tripled since the 1960s, accelerating from an annual average increase of 0.8 ppm per year to 2.4 ppm per year in the decade from 2011 to 2020. 

“The heat trapped by CO₂ and other greenhouse gases is turbo-charging our climate and leading to more extreme weather,” says WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett. “Reducing emissions is therefore essential not just for our climate, but also for our economic security and community wellbeing.”

When the WMO’s bulletin was first published in 2004, the annual average level of CO₂ measured by WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch network of monitoring stations was 377.1 ppm. In 2024, it was 423.9 ppm. 

“There is concern that terrestrial and ocean CO₂ sinks are becoming less effective, which will increase the amount of CO₂ that stays in the atmosphere, thereby accelerating global warming,” says WMO senior scientific officer Oksana Tarasova. “Sustained and strengthened greenhouse gas monitoring is critical to understanding these loops.” 

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