We can reach net zero by 2050 but only if we ditch fossil fuels by COB today
A slightly skeptical reading of the IEA's Net Zero by 2050 - A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector report.
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as Comrade Marx reminds us and never more clearly illustrated than a new report issued today by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that bills itself as “the first comprehensive roadmap to net zero by 2050.”
The report is filled with a certain “we can do this, folks, if we all work together” optimism but its fatal flaw is that it assumes that everyone involved will do exactly the right things at exactly the same time. My experience with human nature is that this doesn’t actually happen in real life.
The IEA, an autonomous intergovernmental agency of some 30 member countries, essentially says in the report that the world has a narrow pathway to achieving zero emissions by 2050 but only if all of us—governments, industries, citizens—commit, before close of business today, to a rugged 400 milestone journey. Here’s a sample:
These include, from today, no investment in new fossil fuel supply projects, and no further final investment decisions for new unabated coal plants. By 2035, there are no sales of new internal combustion engine passenger cars, and by 2040, the global electricity sector has already reached net-zero emissions.
Those are all laudable goals, of course, but does anyone really believe that executives at ExxonMobil are scrambling around this morning looking for cardboard boxes to carry their family pictures home this evening?
The report acknowledges that climate pledges by governments to date—even if fully achieved—would fall well short of what is required to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to net zero by 2050 and give the world an even chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.
But, never mind, let’s move on to the cheerful stuff that really, really, really could happen if everybody just gets on board.
In the near term, the report describes a net zero pathway that requires the immediate and massive deployment of all available clean and efficient energy technologies, combined with a major global push to accelerate innovation. The pathway calls for annual additions of solar PV to reach 630 gigawatts by 2030, and those of wind power to reach 390 gigawatts.
Together, this is four times the record level set in 2020. For solar PV, it is equivalent to installing the world’s current largest solar park roughly every day. A major worldwide push to increase energy efficiency is also an essential part of these efforts, it says, resulting in the global rate of energy efficiency improvements averaging 4% a year through 2030 – about three times the average over the last two decades.
(Don’t worry, we won’t build those land-guzzling solar parks in your neighborhood. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.)
The report sees annual energy investment surging to USD 5 trillion by 2030 in the net zero pathway, adding an extra 0.4 percentage points a year to global GDP growth, based on a joint analysis with the International Monetary Fund. The jump in private and government spending creates millions of jobs in clean energy, including energy efficiency, as well as in the engineering, manufacturing and construction industries. All of this puts global GDP 4% higher in 2030 than it would reach based on current trends.
It is by no means obvious from the report where these technical and financial projections come from or what real-world assumptions they are based upon. It’s sort of a ‘trust me, we got it’ kind of thing.
By 2050, the report projects, the global energy demand will be around 8% smaller than today, serving an economy more than twice as big and a population with 2 billion more people. Almost 90% of electricity generation will come from renewable sources.
Fossil fuels that remain will be used in goods where the carbon is embodied in the product such as plastics, in facilities fitted with carbon capture, and in sectors where low-emissions technology options are scarce, with wind and solar PV together accounting for almost 70%. Most of the remainder comes from nuclear power. Solar is the world’s single largest source of total energy supply. Fossil fuels fall from almost four-fifths of total energy supply today to slightly over one-fifth.
Said Faith Birol, the IEA’s executive director:
"The scale and speed of the efforts demanded by this critical and formidable goal - our best chance of tackling climate change and limiting global warming to 1.5C - make this perhaps the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced. The IEA's pathway to this brighter future brings a historic surge in clean energy investment that creates millions of new jobs and lifts global economic growth. Moving the world onto that pathway requires strong and credible policy actions from governments, underpinned by much greater international cooperation."
Alas, we live in a world where trust and cooperation—even if for mutual survival—are in short supply.
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Dig Deeper
Net Zero by 2050 - A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector
'A pathway to a brighter future': IEA unveils landmark net zero global energy roadmap