Solar technology in Hemau, Bayern, the world’s biggest aerea for solar energy, Constructed in 2002, … [+]
With Russia’s war in Ukraine worsening a global energy crisis, no less than five new reports have come to similar conclusions about what nations need to do to secure their energy future while hitting climate targets.
In short, governments need to double down on renewable energy, massively improve efficiency, and electrify their economies.
In the most recent report, U.K. think tank Ember revealed that solar and wind power generated 10% of the world’s electricity for the first time last year, suggesting renewable energy has begun to redefine the global electricity system.
With oil and gas prices still at record highs around the world, and the UN secretary-general describing the world’s “addiction” to fossil fuels as “mutually assured destruction,” Ember found that solar electricity generation increased 23% last year, while electricity from wind rose 14% worldwide—a rate of change that could put the world on course to achieve its climate change commitments.
More than 50 countries, including the world’s five largest economies, generated over a tenth of their electricity from wind and solar in 2021. Seven nations, including China, hit that 10% threshold for the first time. Meanwhile, three countries—Denmark, Luxembourg and Uruguay—derived more than 40% of their electricity from wind and solar.
But perhaps most striking was the breadth of the change in electricity generation, with wind and solar deployment now gathering pace in almost every region. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the Netherlands, Australia and Vietnam saw the largest transformations to their electricity systems, with each nation switching more than 8% of their electricity production from fossil fuels to renewables.
“Ukraine should be the turning point to enable governments to go full throttle on renewable energy investments,” Ember’s global lead Dave Jones told me. “They want homegrown electricity supply; they want to be reducing their reliance on those expensive fossil fuels; the price of [natural] gas has gone up 10 times. So they should be doing everything they can to make the switch.”
Just a day earlier, a report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) highlighted the triple threat of high fossil fuel prices, energy security concerns and the urgency of climate change, and made the case for a massive acceleration of clean energy generation, to 40% of the world’s energy mix by 2030.
In remarks accompanying his agency’s 2022 outlook analysis, IRENA director-general Francesco La Camera said: “today, governments are facing multiple challenges of energy security, economic recovery and the affordability of energy bills for households and businesses. Many answers lie in the accelerated transition … Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure will only lock-in uneconomic practices, perpetuate existing risks and increase the threats of climate change.”
Noting that some 80% of the global population live in nations that are reliant on fossil fuel imports, La Camera went on: “by contrast, renewables are available in all countries, offering a way out of import dependency and allowing countries to decouple economies from the costs of fossil fuels while driving economic growth and new jobs.”
That transformation would not come cheap, however. IRENA said total investments of $5.7 trillion would be required, year on year—that’s roughly 6% of the global economy, a figure that would surely make conservative economists and politicians balk. But while such an outlay would take vision and no small amount of concerted political courage, the agency found it would bring “concrete socioeconomic and welfare benefits,” while adding some 85 million jobs worldwide—conclusions supported by some prominent economists, including Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz.
Ember’s latest report indicates emissions from energy generation need to fall 60% to stay in line … [+]
At the same time, three new reports from Europe offer something approaching a consensus about what it will take to divorce the EU from its dependence on Russian gas and secure energy independence.
Finnish power services company Wärtsilä found that, by doubling its installation of new wind and solar facilities, Europe could save $360 billion in energy systems costs while cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reducing natural gas consumption.
According to a Wärtsilä report released Tuesday, an “ambitious approach” of taking Europe’s share of renewable energy from the current 33% to 60% by 2030 could also result in reducing energy bills, both in the short and the long term, by as much as 10%.
“By 2030, Europe can halve its power sector’s emissions and gas consumption,” said Sushil Purohit, president of Wärtsilä Energy. “All of this would have seemed unthinkable a decade ago. Yet the combination of plummeting technology costs, the imperative to shift away from fossil fuels and the climate challenge have made it politically acceptable and economically sensible.”
That analysis comes hot on the heels of a joint report released last week by the NGOs Bellona, E3G and the Regulatory Assistance Project, as well as Ember, which found that, with the right support, clean energy could replace 66% of the EU’s Russian gas imports even more rapidly—by 2025.
Importantly, the groups said that with investments in energy efficiency and renewables, that transition could be achieved without extending coal power, and further that the EU would require no new natural gas infrastructure, such as terminals for importing liquified natural gas. To achieve that, EU nations would need to view energy efficiency as “an energy security priority,” and deploy policies accordingly. The researchers said supporting the roll out of renewables and electrification with “investment programmes, administrative streamlining and a better market for demand-side flexibility as well as long-term contracts” would be imperative.
Also last week, German think tank Agora Energiewende proposed 15 actions that the EU could introduce into its RePowerEU plan—a strategic energy plan described in this column—to cut dependency on Russian gas and at the same time adhere to global climate targets.
These included electrifying both industrial processes and heating in buildings and homes, and rapidly ramping up electrical grid flexibility and wind and solar power generation over five years. Taken in sum, Agora found that its recommendations could lead to a 32% reduction in overall gas consumption by 2027.
Matthias Buck, Europe director for Agora Energiewende, stated: “The necessary measures to permanently reduce fossil gas consumption go hand in hand with what’s needed to meet the EU’s climate targets. The EU now needs to make sure that RePowerEU accelerates energy efficiency and renewables expansion to achieve energy sovereignty.”
Ember’s Dave Jones said the fact that the world was already getting a tenth of its electricity from wind and solar demonstrated the feasibility of replacing climate change-causing fossil fuels in a relatively short space of time—suggesting the plans laid out by the research groups were not just desirable, but feasible.
“Wind and solar are now reshaping the global energy system, with the electricity transition well underway,” he noted. But he warned that renewables needed to be deployed at “lightning speed” and at “heroic scale.”
“Leaders are only just waking up to the challenge of how quickly they need to move to 100% clean electricity,” he concluded.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2022/03/30/5-new-reports-show-wind-and-solar-power-can-cripple-putin-secure-climate-goals/