Catching up with the Climate
What's hot in 2025? Earth
Batteries will decarbonise transport and the grid. Likely, like much of the Intercalation Team, you’re interested in batteries in order to save the world’s future. Today we thought we’d take some time to TLDR where the climate is at the beginning of 2025.
Remember, we can decarbonise every industry under the sun, but ultimately things won’t stop getting worse until we stop burning fossil fuels.
The largest emitting greenhouse emitting sectors across the world are electricity generation and transport. These are key industries for batteries to decarbonise with electric vehicles and stationary storage.
Climate change can be summarised as the burning of fossil fuels releasing CO2 and other gases into the atmosphere. More CO2 in the atmosphere causes a thicker blanket around the Earth that traps radiative heat from the sun.
Before humans started messing with the level of carbon in the atmosphere, the Earth had several self-regulating systems that balanced the natural carbon release (eg forest fires) with carbon sinks (eg peat bogs). That balance has been tipped as more and more carbon is released. In 2024, we’re at 427 ppm.
2024 was the hottest year on record
2024 was officially declared as +1.6 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures by the European Copernicus climate service. Different parts of the world are heating up at different rates.
Importantly, the 1.5 degree target refers to the average over a couple of decades, so 2024 passing this threshold does not mean that the Paris Agreement is totally cooked. It does, however, mean we are in trouble and need urgent action.
Planetary boundaries
The Stockholm Resilience Centre has conceptualized nine planetary boundaries which must not be crossed in order to have a stable and livable future for humanity. They all intertwine with one another.
For instance, ocean acidification represents how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reacts with the sea to form carbonic acid, dropping the pH. The lower pH water will eat away at the calcium carbonate used by oysters, clams, lobsters, shrimp, coral reefs, and other marine life to build their shells and skeletons. This could cause collapse of the food chain in the oceans.
At the beginning of 2025, we have crossed 6 planetary boundaries. It’s not just CO2 emissions that matter, but also our relationship with nature, toxins and how we are changing the planet’s natural balance.
The AMOC
Something that may not have been on your radar is an ocean current called the Atlantic Meridonial Overturning Circulation (AMOC). It’s a part of a series of ocean currents that move water, heat, and nutrients across the Atlantic Ocean and the globe.
In 2024, climate scientists wrote an open letter about their concerns to the Nordic Council of ministers.
According to AMOC specialists, there are signs that the AMOC has been weakening for the last 60 or 70 years due to global heating, although this is debated. It’s reported as highly likely (95%) to reach a tipping point on current trajectory between 2025 and 2095.
In a short period, likely a few decades, average temperatures in Europe will drop around 5-15 degrees. This will significantly limit European agriculture. The Atlantic Ocean would rise by 70 cm, submerging many coastal cities on both sides of it. The Amazon rainforest could irreversibly enter a savanna-like state, and the southern hemisphere would become increasingly warmer.
The last Atlantic Current halt occurred about 12,900 years ago, so we really have no idea how it would actually look. You can read more about potential scenarios in an article by the Financial Times here.
It’s difficult to measure an ocean current with the same certainty as a current in a battery, so all of these measurements have massive uncertainties. That’s what is most terrifying.
El Niño and La Niña
The earth also has two Pacific-based fluctuations called El Niño and La Niña, collectively known as El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO). In general, El Niño brings hot dry weather in the Pacific region and La Niña is cool and wet. The phases typically last nine to 12 months, but can sometimes last for years. El Niño and La Niña events occur every two to seven years.
El Niño ended in May 2024, and La Niña started officially in December 2024, expected to last until February-April 2025. La Niña has been delayed and much weaker than the El Niño of 2024, so may not have as strong a cooling effect on the planet as previously hoped.
Extreme weather
The last twelve months have not been kind with regard to extreme weather. From the floods in Valencia to Hurricanes Milton and Helene, to severe drought in the Amazon, as well as floods in Sudan, humans and their infrastructure have suffered. These extreme events can be assessed to see how much more likely they were made by climate change.
The 10 most costly events of 2024 caused $229bn in damage and killed 2,000 people, and 3/4 of this damage was in the US. This makes battery factories look pretty reasonable. You’ve also got to wonder who will pay for this, with insurance companies across the world in crisis at the level of costs. These things are only going to get more frequent and more extreme.
Perseverance
Things are urgent. Sustainable batteries are more important than ever.
Don’t forget: Shell and Exxon both predicted the terrible impacts of climate change in the 1970s and then spent decades delaying action and lobbying governments to keep selling their products. This is straight out of the playbook of the tobacco industries, but with consequences for every living being on planet Earth.
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