Cutting emissions in line with the 1.5C warming limit, rather than following current climate policies, could curb long-term sea level rise by 64cm, a new study says.
The research, published in Nature Climate Change, projects how much sea level rise will be unavoidable – or “locked in” – by the year 2300, due to emissions over the coming decades.
According to the authors, 29cm of global average sea level rise is already in the pipeline due to the emissions that were released up to the year 2020.
Following current climate policies until the year 2090 will “lock in” an additional 79cm of sea level rise for the year 2300, the study finds.
However, reducing emissions in line with 1.5C would cut this additional sea level rise to 15cm.
The analysis shows that “if we reduce emissions rapidly in the coming decades, there is a clear path to limiting the legacy of sea level rise”, the lead author of the study tells Carbon Brief.
The study also explores regional sea level rise, showing that Pacific small-island nations will face some of the highest rates of sea level rise.
A scientist not involved in the research tells Carbon Brief that the paper “exposes a deep inequity” between nations, arguing that this makes “ambitious” action to cut greenhouse gas emissions “not just a climate necessity, but a climate-justice imperative”.
‘Locked in’
Average global sea level has risen by more than 20cm since 1900, driven mainly by human-caused climate change through thermal expansion of the ocean and the melting of glaciers and ice sheets.
Rising seas are already threatening to wipe out small-island nations, jeopardising the security, livelihoods and cultures of people who live in these areas. Meanwhile, coastal regions around the world are facing more frequent flooding, erosion and saltwater intrusion.
The authors of the new study explain that emissions released over the coming decades will affect global sea levels for hundreds of years. This is because the oceans and ice sheets respond slowly to past and present warming, they note.
The authors call this “locked in” or “committed” sea level rise.
The study explains that sea level projections are generally based on 21st century emissions pathways, but notes that “late-century emissions then dominate the longer-term sea-level response and mask the impact of near-term emissions”.
In contrast, this study assesses the impact of emissions both early and late in the 21st century – including past emissions and those projected to occur under different emissions pathways. The research investigates how much sea level rise will be locked in by the year 2300 through these emissions.
According to the authors, 29cm of global average sea level rise, compared to 1995-2014, is already locked in due to the emissions that were released up to the year 2020.
Rising seas
The study uses emulators – simple climate models with lower time and computational costs than full-scale Earth system models – to model how much sea level rise will be locked in by 2300 due to 21st century emissions.
The authors chose five emissions pathways and ran multiple model runs where they simulated sudden stops in emissions at the end of each decade for each pathway. This allowed them to isolate the emissions just until these dates.
For example, modelling a sudden drop in emissions in the year 2050 allows the authors to calculate how much sea level rise over the next two centuries is driven solely by human-caused emissions released over the next two decades.
The authors use five emissions pathways:
- SSP1-1.9: A very-low emissions reductions pathway “consistent with” the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit
- SSP1-2.6: A “low” emissions pathway consistent with 2C of warming
- SSP2-4.5: A “current climate policy-like trajectory”
- SSP3-7.0: A “high” emissions pathway
- SSP5-8.5: A “very-high emissions” pathway
The left-most panel shows how much additional sea level rise is locked in for the year 2300 due to emissions produced between 2020 and 2030. The next three panels show the results for emissions produced between 2020 and 2050, 2070 and 2090, respectively.
The plot shows that higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions lock in more sea level rise for the year 2300.
The authors find that, under the SSP2-4.5 “current climate policies” scenario, human-produced greenhouse gas emissions over 2020-50 will lock in an additional 29cm of sea level rise by the year 2300. This number grows to 79cm when including emissions out to 2090 under this scenario.
Meanwhile, under the scenario consistent with the 1.5C limit, only 15cm of additional sea level rise will be locked in by 2090.
This means that efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades could curb long-term sea level rise by an extra 64cm.
The study authors say that their results “reinforce how every increment of additional peak warming from cumulative emissions irreversibly increases sea level rise”.
Dr Alexander Nauels is a science adviser at Climate Analytics and lead author on the study. He tells Carbon Brief that the world is “already committed to a really substantive amount of sea level rise” and stresses that this must be considered in terms of “adaptation, planning and risk management”.
However, he adds, “if we reduce emissions rapidly in the coming decades, there is a clear path to limiting the legacy of sea level rise that we would produce in the coming decades”.
Dr Catia Domingues, is a researcher at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre and was not involved in the study. She tells Carbon Brief that the study’s methodology is “clever and necessary”. She adds:
“[The study] clearly shows how the emissions from just the next 30 years, under current climate policies, will write an irreversible chapter for centuries to come, locking in significant sea level rise on their own.”
Warming levels
The authors also calculate the committed sea level rise at different warming levels.
The chart below plots sea level rise against warming level for every scenario and time period used in the study. It highlights how higher levels of warming commit the world to ever higher seas.
Committed sea level rise by 2300 at different warming levels, under SSP1-1.9 (light blue), SSP1-2.6 (dark blue), SSP2-4.5 (yellow), SSP3-7.0 (red) and SSP5-8.5 (dark red) pathways. Circles, X’s, squares and crosses indicate data points for 2030, 2050, 2070 and 2090 respectively. The green and blue lines show the 1.5C and 2C temperature thresholds. Source: Nauels et al (2025).
The authors note that the relationship between global temperature and committed sea level rise to 2300 is not “linear”, noting that the amount of sea level rise that is locked in by warming accelerates as global temperatures rise.
The authors explain that this is due to a “non-linear increase in ice mass loss in a warmer world” – in other words, physical feedbacks mean that higher levels of warming could see disproportionately large increases in ice losses.
Nauels tells Carbon Brief many sea level processes, such as ice-sheet responses, are still not “fully understood”. This means that when looking out to 2300, there can be “large uncertainties” in results, he adds.
Nevertheless, he argues that it is “still very important to explore the longer-term sea level response, because of the huge risk that is attached to it”.
Inequity
The main findings of the study focus on global average sea level rise. However, the authors note that sea level rise is not consistent across the world, with some regions facing faster rates of sea level rise than others.
This is largely due to ocean currents, driven by wind, warming, evaporation and rainfall, which push large masses of water around the planet. It is also caused by the bumpy, non-uniform surface of the earth.
To show these differences, the authors also selected a handful of coastal regions to study.
Nauels tells Carbon Brief that the study authors decided to focus on a handful of regions that “diverge” from the average global trend.
For example, they find that Pago Pago – the capital of American Samoa, which is made up of a string of coastal villages – will experience greater committed sea level rise than the global average.
On the other hand, Oslo is experiencing “land uplift” and actually shows a drop in sea level under the lowest warming scenario.
The NOC’s Domingues tells Carbon Brief that the study “exposes a deep inequity” between nations. She adds:
“This makes ambitious mitigation not just a climate necessity, but a climate-justice imperative.”
The post Rapid emissions cuts would avoid 64cm of ‘locked in’ sea level rise by 2300 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Rapid emissions cuts would avoid 64cm of ‘locked in’ sea level rise by 2300
Just one year ago, Lars Christian Bacher said his career embodied the energy transition – moving from CFO of Norway’s state-controlled oil company Equinor to leading one of Europe’s few home-grown battery makers.
Morrow Batteries was on a mission to compete alongside the industry’s dominant Asian, mainly Chinese, battery producers as Europe sought to reduce its reliance on imports, Bacher told a group of foreign journalists on a sunny day in Oslo last May.
But seven months later, Bacher stepped down as CEO, and earlier this month, Morrow Batteries said it had filed for bankruptcy after its financial situation “deteriorated”.
Coming a year after Swedish battery maker Northvolt filed for bankruptcy, industry analysts said Morrow’s descent into financial difficulties would likely deal a fresh blow to investor confidence in European battery manufacturers – potentially keeping Europe dependent on Chinese energy transition technology for longer.
While bigger European battery makers such as ACC, Verkor and PowerCo – linked to car-makers Stellantis, Renault and Volkswagen, respectively – are still in business, Europe needs to reduce its reliance on China, experts say.
“It’s just such a critical technology that you cannot rely on somebody else,” said Julia Poliscanova, batteries lead at the Brussels-based advocacy group Transport & Environment.
State-backed eco-batteries
Established in 2020, Morrow Batteries expanded its workforce to more than 200 and has the ability to produce three million batteries a year at its factory in the forest outside the coastal city of Arendal, on Norway’s picturesque southern tip.
Investors in the startup included industrial engineering companies Siemens and ABB, and it received a 550 million krone ($59 million) loan from state development agency Innovation Norway. State-owned energy and investment companies were also among its shareholders.
Morrow has promoted its batteries as particularly sustainable, with solar and hydropower supplying energy to the factory. Its lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries do not contain nickel or cobalt, distancing them from the environmental and social problems often linked to critical minerals mining.
“From a sustainability point of view, this is as good as it gets,” Bacher said last May.
He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the company’s decision to file for bankruptcy proceedings.
It aimed to sell these batteries for energy storage, increasingly important as variable solar and wind power comes to dominate European grids, and for off-road and commercial vehicles. Those sectors, rather than electric cars and motorbikes, were being targeted because they were subject to less ferocious competition from Asia, Bacher said.
Industry experts say Morrow started smaller and slower than Northvolt, was selective about its target customers and secured deals with Finnish environmental technology company Proventia Oy and an unnamed German defence company.
But it still ran into financial trouble.
Cash crunch proves costly
In a statement announcing the bankruptcy, Morrow’s board said it had been trying to secure a new industrial investor and finance, and that “several of the ongoing efforts had reached an advanced stage”.
But these talks “could not be concluded within the constraints imposed by the group’s liquidity situation”, it said, blaming the failure on “the capital requirements inherent in an early industrialisation phase” combined with “increased capital costs, delays in the industrialisation process and a more restrained investment market”.
Northvolt’s bankruptcy may have also damaged Morrow’s attempts to raise money. Last May, Bacher himself acknowledged that it “didn’t help”.
Morrow also cited oversupply in the global battery market, and the resulting downward “price pressure”. The price of LFP batteries fell by nearly half between 2022 and 2025, eating into producers’ profit margins, according to the International Energy Agency.
The hefty state investment in Morrow has generated controversy in Norway following its bankruptcy. The leader of the right-wing Progress Party (FrP), Sylvi Listhaug, has said Norwegian taxpayers’ money was wasted on an unviable business.
But others, like Poliscanova and the head of the European Battery Alliance trade association Emma Nehrenheim, told Climate Home News that if Europe wants a battery industry, it will need to back home-grown manufacturers whole-heartedly.
“Valley of death” kills startups
As European battery manufacturers work to perfect and scale up their technology and processes, they face “a valley of death” with severe competition and little patience from investors or battery customers who “can easily buy them from China”, Poliscanova said.
Startups like Morrow typically raise project financing to get them off the ground, according to Nehrenheim. In the period between that finance ending and reaching profitability, they have to rely on money they set aside as a project reserve.
If they underestimate this reserve, which she said is easy to do when setting up a new factory making a new product, they need more money to bridge the gap. This can come from specialised bridging investors, from customers or from governments.
For Morrow, however, the money did not arrive in time.
Nehrenheim – who was previously Northvolt’s chief environmental officer – said it was a characteristically European failure from investors.
“We’re not good at this,” she said. “We’re not bold enough to compete with Silicon Valley or the Asian (countries), who have been scaling industry now for decades.”
Clean energy sovereignty vs price
Since Northvolt’s bankruptcy filing, the European Union has announced policies to support European battery makers.
It is introducing a €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) “battery booster“, providing interest-free loans to battery manufacturers. It is considering putting tariffs on imported batteries, subsidising European battery makers and tying electric car incentives to locally made batteries through the Industrial Accelerator Act. None of these policies are yet in place.
With trade disputes rising up the agenda of UN climate talks, Poliscanova conceded that such moves are protectionist, although she said she prefers to call them industrial policy.
“Honestly,” she said, “the EU and the UK are the two large global blocks left that don’t have such industrial protectionist policies. India has it, Brazil has it, China has it, the US has it – we’re literally the last fool standing thinking that [the World Trade Organization] is the way to go.”
Li Shuo, China Climate Hub director at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said that the trade-offs between cheap foreign batteries and more expensive European ones “need to be discussed honestly”.
“How much higher are Europeans willing to pay?” he said. “How much delay in climate deployment is acceptable? Can we really decarbonise and de-risk at the same time? How long can politicians condemn cheap Chinese imports while consumers simultaneously demand affordability?”
While European policymakers want to fight China, the average European just wants a cheap battery, he added.
Closing the cost gap
But once European battery makers scale up, the price gap with Chinese batteries will shrink, Poliscanova said.
While German LFP battery cells are 90% more expensive than those made in China, scale-up could close this gap to a “sovereignty premium” of just 25% by 2030, Transport & Environment estimates.
Nehrenheim acknowledged that most of Europe’s batteries will continue to come from Asia or the United States. “I’m very happy for that because they’re scaling fast and they get great support subsidies in their respective countries to supply us to help us in the [energy] transition,” she said.
But European-headquartered companies must make at least a quarter of the region’s batteries, she said, otherwise if supply is disrupted – whether by geopolitical factors, a pandemic or natural disaster – the industry will have nothing to scale up from.
Nehrenheim said she was almost 100% confident that Morrow’s factory will continue to produce batteries. The company said it expected a court-appointed bankruptcy administrator to assume control over the company’s assets and operations.
Citing investors’ €1.4 billion ($1.62 billion) reprieve of Swedish green steelmaker Stegra in April, Nehrenheim said there were reasons to be hopeful about Morrow’s survival as Europe demands batteries for diverse uses beyond cars – from energy storage to drones and forklift trucks.
“Somebody will pick this up,” she said.
The post After another battery startup bankruptcy, can Europe ever cut reliance on China? appeared first on Climate Home News.
After another battery startup bankruptcy, can Europe ever cut reliance on China?
Climate Change
‘Energy Vampires’: Greenpeace calls for moratorium on data centres as new report reveals frenzied rollout would derail energy transition
SYDNEY, Wednesday 27 May 2026 — A new report from Greenpeace Australia Pacific and independent expert Ketan Joshi reveals how the frenzied rollout of AI data centres in Australia is set to derail the renewable energy transition, entrench gas and turbocharge climate pollution, prompting calls for an urgent moratorium on data centre approvals until appropriate guardrails are in place.
The report, Energy Vampires: the AI data centres draining Australia, reveals the staggering scale of data centre growth in Australia, set to follow a US path of emissions blowout and rising community opposition to the resource-hungry facilities. The report exposes the links between the data centre lobby and the gas industry, who are using data centre growth to justify extracting more gas.
Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling on the Federal Government to urgently implement a moratorium on the construction and approval of new data centres, until appropriate regulations and safeguards have been put in place to protect the climate and communities.
Key findings:
- Data centres are already failing to cover their own demand with additional renewable energy, and resisting calls to mandate that they do.
- At its peak, Australia’s biggest proposed data centre, the 1GW Mamre Road Data Centre Campus in Western Sydney, will generate annual emissions equivalent to 560,000 petrol cars, or all domestic flights within NSW in 2023.
- There are early signs of a data centre-fuelled gas boom in Australia, including proposals for new on-site gas, as seen in the US.
- Cloud Carrier’s proposed gas-fired data centre in NSW would wipe out the state’s entire projected 2028 emissions cuts.
- Even if only 1 in 4 new Australian data centres were powered by new on-site gas, it would result in 2.8x higher total emissions compared to using grid power.
Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Australia is completely unprepared for the magnitude of impacts of the AI-driven data centre frenzy. Data centres are being rolled out at a feverish pace, with some of the largest planned for Australia consuming as much energy as Adelaide. The recent federal and state energy minister communique is a positive first step towards regulating the data centre industry, and managing its impact on the energy transition and the communities where they’re being built.
“But we should all be concerned by the extreme lack of scrutiny being applied to the companies leading the data centre charge in Australia and their proposals. Without strong, legislated standards, we risk replicating the disastrous US pattern, where Big Tech corporations have carte blanche to drain energy and water, and build new, polluting gas and diesel-powered plants to fuel their operations. This has seen mounting community opposition that transcends party politics, something we’re beginning to see here in Australia.
“Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on new data centre approvals and construction until we have clearly defined, enforceable regulations and standards in place to govern this industry — essential if we hope to avoid the alarming outcomes outlined in this report.
“Australia is not a playground for Big Tech corporations. It is time our leaders stepped up and took seriously their role as custodians of our resources and protectors of our society and environment.”
Ketan Joshi, independent report author and climate expert said: “Impatience is not a virtue. The reckless data centre buildout is heaping massive new load onto the grid, meaning renewables have to run harder just to stay in the same spot. Currently data centres increase coal and gas output and delay shutdowns, while plugging polluting gas into data centres does the damage directly instead.
“Unless the data centre industry builds no new fossil fuels and far more new renewables than new demand, we end up worse off. Australia’s gas industry sees a lifeline in an unchecked data centre frenzy, and the feeling seems to be mutual.
“Data centre demand projections keep jabbing upwards each revision, and emissions projections keep getting worse. Everywhere in the world facing this frenzy sees the same trend.
“Data centre moratoria have bipartisan support in countries around the world as the only path to reintroducing careful, considered governance of data centre growth. In the context of an irrational, unjustified panic, a temporary pause brings reason and rationality, along with bringing power to communities.”
-ENDS-
Images and an interview clipreel of Greenpeace spokespeople at the Mamre Road data centre in Western Sydney available here.
Media contacts:
Lucy Keller on 0491 135 308 or lucy.keller@greenpeace.org
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
A new report from Greenpeace Australia Pacific and independent expert Ketan Joshi reveals how the frenzied rollout of AI data centres in Australia is set to derail the renewable energy transition, entrench gas and turbocharge climate pollution, prompting calls for an urgent moratorium on data centre approvals until appropriate guardrails are in place.
The frenzied rollout of AI data centres in Australia is rushing through massive new projects, which will derail Australia’s energy transition unless the government urgently intervenes.
Key findings
- The frenzied rollout of AI data centres in Australia is rushing through massive new projects, which will derail Australia’s energy transition unless the government urgently intervenes. Our conservative assumptions mean this impact is understated, in this analysis.
- Australia’s biggest proposed data centre, the 1GW Mamre Road Data Centre Campus in Western Sydney, will generate peak annual grid emissions equivalent to that produced by 560,000 petrol cars for a year or all domestic flights within NSW in 2023.
- Data centres already fail to cover their own emissions with new renewables and their rollout will dramatically hold back Australia’s energy transition.
- No data centre operator analysed in this report adequately proves their claim of driving Australia’s renewable energy growth. Claims they are doing this through truly “additional” new power purchasing agreements for renewable energy are unsubstantiated.
- There are early signs of a data centre-fuelled gas boom in Australia, which will come with massive, nationally significant climate costs. For example, the Tamboran proposal for the Northern Territory would effectively double the state’s emissions. In NSW, Cloud Carrier’s proposed gas-fired project would wipe out NSW’s entire projected 2028 emissions cuts.
- Even if only 1 in 4 new Australian data centres were powered by new on-site gas, it would result in 2.8x higher total emissions compared to using grid power.
- New analysis shows that on-site gas for data centres globally could fuel emissions that exceed Brazil’s total power grid emissions by 2030.
- Fossil fuel corporations are quietly joining the data centre lobby group as members, and sponsoring and attending technology industry conferences. The two industries are reinforcing each other’s talking points and PR spin.
- Data centre operators do not disclose the customers of an individual facility, the purpose of the computations performed there, or site-specific energy consumption, despite the industry’s defense of its ‘critical infrastructure’ status or claims of transparency. It is a matter of public record that AI is being used for abuse, war and other human rights violations.
- Data centres can be ‘right sized’ through community ownership schemes, well-deployed AI software and strict moratoria to allow for democratic governance of this industry.
This report recommends:
- An urgent moratorium on data centre development until safeguards are legislated
- Binding, legislated standards for AI development, including substantiated claims of additional renewable energy
- Full disclosure of services delivered, emissions, finances and energy use, per project
- Full assessment of compliance with human rights frameworks
Lead author: Ketan Joshi is an independent climate, environment and sustainability expert. He was the lead author on “The AI Climate Hoax”, published with several corporate accountability and environmental groups in 2026, and previously wrote “Windfall: Unlocking a Fossil Free Future” with the University of New South Wales Press. He worked for eight years in Australia’s renewable energy sector (corporate and government), and has worked with European NGOs working on climate communications and corporate accountability.
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