This climate simulator shows how effective your sustainability ideas and efforts are

Tree-planting here, coastal clean up there. How exactly do these sustainability measures help in the fight against climate change?

Enter En-Roads, a climate simulator legally owned and developed by Climate Interactive, with MIT Sloan as co-developers. Based on the best available science, it allows users to explore the impact of various policies and sustainability measures on our climate all with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C goal in mind. It's been used by decision makers in governments, businesses, NGOs, and even the academe, including former US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Upon opening the interactive simulator, you'll see that given the current policies and pledges, the world is on track to a 3.3C warming — an alarming reminder that we have a long way to go to achieve the 1.5C goal set by the Paris Agreement.

Beneath it are various fields — energy supply, transport, buildings and industry, growth, and carbon dioxide removal — that you can toggle to see which climate action will help move the needle.

SCREENGRAB: EN-ROADS

For instance, taxing various fossil fuel-based energy supply like coal, oil, natural gas and bioenergy will bring down the warming temperature from 3.3C to 3.1C. Additionally subsidizing renewables will bring it down to 3C and so it goes. 

Interesting and illuminating, it will remind you that tackling the climate crisis will require the whole of world approach. Perhaps more urgently, En-Roads can show how we might actually be putting too much focus on the wrong things.

In the Philippines, there are only five En-Roads ambassadors, individuals trained to give and facilitate workshops and simulations. Among them is Raf Dionisio, who does “private runs for groups who want to learn together.”

Recently partnering with Komunidad, and 3Zero House, Raf facilitated an En-Roads simulation workshop to 30 participants from various fields, including GMA News Online, giving them a feel for how a COP negotiation feels like and highlighting the importance of team work in solving the crisis.

Below are a few things we learned.

1. We cannot reforest our way out of the climate crisis

We all know that planting trees and taking care of our forests are good. These are essential. Forests can help hold water in, helping prevent floods and landslides, they sequester carbon, and they keep temperatures manageable — a most important thing given the present warming of the planet. In fact, forests can also be income generators.

During the simulation, participants initially focused on reducing deforestation and increasing nature-based solutions like afforestation (planting trees in land areas where there was no forest previously). But despite maxing these out, we failed to bring down the temperature substantially. In fact, the scenario remained at the 3.3C trajectory.

Raf, who leads reforesting initiatives across the country, even going viral last year for helping an IP community reforest their ancestral land in Zambales, told GMA News Online he feels the need to restrategize. 

"After taking the En-Roads class in June 2024, it became clear that MAD (his company) and myself had to expand to solve more issues (around climate and the environment)," he said.

Immediately, participants were reminded of what experts have time and again said: We cannot reforest our way out of the crisis. Reforestation and stopping deforestation are essential, but they not enough to solve the climate crisis.

2. It's not just the urban heat island effect

Cities feel the brunt of global warming thanks to the urban heat island effect from all the cement and the dearth of trees.

But cement doesn't just reflect the intensity of climate crisis. At the simulation, we learned it contributes to it. Cement is super carbon intensive, producing 0.5 to 0.9 kilogram of carbon dioxide for every one kilogram of cement. In fact, according to Science Direct, the yearly production of 3.6B tonnes of cement results "in approximately 3.24B tonnes of CO2 emissions every year."

Among the participants of the simulation workshop is Stephan Marrec, general manager of French construction company Reinforced Earth Philippines, who said the "very bad carbon emission footprint" of cement mainly comes from the fabrication process, where the calcification of limestones needs extremely highly temperatures of 1500C. 

"Cement factories are very demanding in terms of energy supply," Stephane says, and in the Philippines, these factories are powered by fossil fuels.   

Exploring En-Roads, one can see that improving energy efficiency of buildings and industry (by reducing energy use of factories, for one) can bring down the temperature increase by 0.1%.

One way to make cement less carbon intensive is to include waste products into its processes and mixture. Yes, using recycled products in construction is one way to do that, but Stephane brings up fly ash, a waste product from burning coal. 

Fly ash takes the form of fine powder "consisting of the noncombustible matter." Using it as a replacement for cement, doesn't just divert waste from ending up in landfills and oceans (and harming marine life and contaminating groundwater in the process), it makes cement production less carbon intensive, too.

"When we substitute part of the cement content with fly-ash, it results in equivalent [carbon] saving. For instance, if you add 30% fly ash, you reduce your emissions by 30%," Stephane explains, adding fly ash usage "can be pushed up to 50%."

3. Cleaning up our energy supply is the fastest way to 1.5C  

As we explored the simulator, we found out that clean energy can quickly and effectively help bring down temperature increase. Highly taxing coal, oil, and natural gas, and subsiding renewables immediately brought down the temperatures from 3.3C to 3.1C, while increasing the energy efficiency of both transport and buildings and industry brought it down further to 3C.

Highly subsidizing both buildings and transport meanwhile helped breech the 3C mark to hit 2.9C.

Speaking of transport...

4. The PUV modernization program will have you thinking about just transition

Before it all became about livelihood, let's not forget that the PUV modernization program was actually a government response to the climate crisis.  

At the simulation workshop, Danielle V. Guillen, PhD, an associate professor at the Asian Institute of Tourism, University of the Philippines Diliman, tells GMA News Online she was in Paris when the Paris Agreement of 2015 was signed.

At that time, she was working at GIZ Philippines as their Senior Advisor on Transport and Climate Change and "one sector identified in the Philippines is reducing GHG emissions in road-based transport as part of our climate action: Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMA)."

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), "NAMAs refer to any action that reduces emissions in developing countries," and according to the initial study of GIZ, ours "is a combination of shift and improve approaches to reduce emissions from the transport sector and tackles different arenas of the public transport market."

The study called Jeepney+ NAMA said, "Transportation is noted as the largest source of air pollution and energy-related GHG emissions in the Philippines at 34%," with the jeepney sector contributing significantly to the GHG emissions at 7% of all transport-related GHG emissions in 2012.

Much like what the participants learned about the role of transportation in keeping temperature rise to 1.5C, the initial NAMA study said "Transport is one of the key sectors identified in order to achieve this reduction goal (NDC's reduction of 70% GHG by 2030)."

Discussions about modernization started in 2014, with the Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program (PUVMP) really starting until 2017. By then, issues about jeepney drivers not being able to afford expensive units took the headlines.

The PUV modernization wasn't really meant to phase our traditional jeepneys out, Danielle explained. "We couldn't phase out the jeepneys because we also don't have the manufacturing capacity [to replace them]," she said.

Responding to the climate crisis shouldn't come at the expense of certain groups and sectors — like jeepney drivers. This is what just transition is about, which the International Labour Organization (ILO) defines: “Greening the economy in a way that is as fair and inclusive as possible to everyone concerned, creating decent work opportunities and leaving no one behind.” 

5. The transition to electric vehicles (EVs) isn't as straightforward a solution as it sounds

As transportation amounts to 34% of air pollution and energy-related GHG emissions in the Philippines, switching to electric vehicles and foregoing fossil-fuel dependent cars sounds like an easy solution, right?

Yes — if our main energy supply isn't dependent on fossil fuels.

"You may reduce the direct emissions from your car, but because EVs are dependent on electric supply, in the Philippines, it means you need to burn coal to run your EV, which is not at all efficient in terms of overall emission," Marrec observes.

While the Philippines (along with Vietnam) leads in renewable energy expansion in Southeast Asia, our energy mix as of 2022 remains dependent on fossil fuel at roughly 67%. Renewables were only at 32.7%.

At COP29, DENR's Noralene M. Uy, Ph.D, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Planning, International Affairs and Climate Change told GMA News Online that "the government needed to pace the country's transition to renewables due to 'certain peculiarities' of our energy sector."

"Hindi kasi pwedeng mag full blast agad ang renewables. Kailangan siya i-pacing kasi ang energy sector natin, ay private sector driven. Unlike other countries that can commit to net zero because they are centralized, we are dependent on the private sector," she said, adding "we have to navigate this challenge."

[We are looking for alternatives in the interim because we cannot go full blast on renewables. We need to pace it because our energy sector is driven by private sector. Unlike other countries that can commit to net zero because they are centralized, we are dependent on the private sector.] 

The Department of Energy is looking to bring up the share of renewable energy to 35% by 2040 and 50% by 2050.

— GMA Integrated News

Hold a climate simulation workshop for your organization with MAD Travel.