War in Ukraine Likely to Speed, Not Slow, Shift
to Clean Energy, I.E.A. Says
While some nations are burning more coal this year in
response to natural-gas shortages spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that
effect is expected to be short-lived.
Brad Plumer
By Brad
Plumer
Oct. 27,
2022
Updated
7:11 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/climate/global-clean-energy-iea.html
WASHINGTON
— The energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is likely to speed
up rather than slow down the global transition away from fossil fuels and
toward cleaner technologies like wind, solar and electric vehicles, the world’s
leading energy agency said Thursday.
While some
countries have been burning more fossil fuels such as coal this year in
response to natural gas shortages caused by the war in Ukraine, that effect is
expected to be short-lived, the International Energy Agency said in its annual
World Energy Outlook, a 524-page report that forecasts global energy trends to
2050.
Instead,
for the first time, the agency now predicts that worldwide demand for every
type of fossil fuel will peak in the near future.
One major
reason is that many countries have responded to soaring prices for fossil fuels
this year by embracing wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear power plants,
hydrogen fuels, electric vehicles and electric heat pumps. In the United
States, Congress approved more than $370 billion in spending for such
technologies under the recent Inflation Reduction Act. Japan is pursuing a new
“green transformation” program that will help fund nuclear power, hydrogen and
other low-emissions technologies. China, India and South Korea have all
ratcheted up national targets for renewable and nuclear power.
And yet,
the shift toward cleaner sources of energy still isn’t happening fast enough to
avoid dangerous levels of global warming, the agency said, not unless
governments take much stronger action to reduce their planet-warming carbon dioxide
emissions over the next few years.
Based on
current policies put in place by national governments, global coal use is
expected to start declining in the next few years, natural gas demand is likely
to hit a plateau by the end of this decade and oil use is projected to level
off by the mid-2030s.
Meanwhile,
global investment in clean energy is now expected to rise from $1.3 trillion in
2022 to more than $2 trillion annually by 2030, a significant shift, the agency
said.
“It’s
notable that many of these new clean energy targets aren’t being put in place
solely for climate change reasons,” said Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive
director, in an interview. “Increasingly, the big drivers are energy security
as well as industrial policy — a lot of countries want to be at the leading
edge of the energy industries of the future.”
Current
energy policies put the world on track to reach peak carbon dioxide emissions
by 2025 and warm roughly 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100
compared with preindustrial levels, the energy agency estimated. That is in
line with separate projections released Wednesday by the United Nations, which
analyzed nations’ stated promises to tackle emissions.
In Paris in
2015, world leaders agreed to try to limit average global warming to around 1.5
degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) to avoid some of the most dire and
irreversible risks from climate change, such as widespread crop failures or
ecosystem collapse. That would require much steeper cuts in greenhouse gases,
with emissions not just peaking in the next few years but falling nearly in
half by the end of this decade, scientists have said. The planet has already
warmed an average of about 1.1 degrees Celsius.
Climate
pledges fall short. Countries are failing to live up to their commitments to
fight climate change, pointing Earth toward a future marked by more intense
fires, drought and other havoc, according to a new U.N. report. Just 26 of 193
nations that agreed last year to step up their climate actions have followed
through with more ambitious plans.
Protest
tactics spark debate. Desperate to end complacency about the climate crisis,
some climate activists are resorting to high profile tactics, like throwing
food at priceless artwork in museums. The actions have gone viral and set off
an international storm of outrage and debate.
Shifting
patterns. The melting of the snowpack in the high Cascades has long been a
source of sustenance in the Pacific Northwest. But as climate change makes
seasons less predictable and precipitation more variable, people there are
reimagining the region’s future and the tools that will be needed to manage it.
Facing
drought. The story of the Netherlands’ long struggles against excess water is
written all over its boggy landscape. Now that climate change is drying it out,
the Dutch are hoping to engineer once again their way to safety — only this
time, by figuring out how to hold onto water instead of flushing it out.
A more
extreme monsoon. South Asia’s annual monsoon is inextricably linked, culturally
and economically, to much of Asia, bringing life-giving water to nearly
one-quarter of the world’s population. But climate change is making the monsoon
more erratic, less dependable and even dangerous, with more violent rainfall as
well as worsening dry spells.
With each
fraction of a degree of warming, tens of millions more people worldwide would
be exposed to life-threatening heat waves, food and water scarcity, and coastal
flooding while millions more mammals, insects, birds and plants would
disappear.
“If we want
to hit those more ambitious climate targets, we’d likely need to see about $4
trillion in clean energy investment by 2030,” Dr. Birol said, or double what
the agency currently projects. “In particular, there’s not nearly enough
investment going into the developing world.”
This year,
global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are expected to rise roughly
1 percent and approach record highs, in part because of an uptick in coal use
in places like Europe as countries scramble to replace lost Russian gas. (Coal
is the most polluting of all fossil fuels.)
Still, that
is a far smaller increase than some analysts had feared when war in Ukraine
first broke out. The rise in emissions would have been three times as large had
it not been for a rapid deployment of wind turbines, solar panels and electric
vehicles worldwide, the agency said. Soaring energy prices and weak economic
growth in Europe and China also contributed to keep emissions down.
And the
recent rise in coal use may prove fleeting. European nations are currently
planning to install roughly 50 gigawatts worth of renewable power next year,
which would be more than enough to supplant this year’s increase in coal
generation. And globally, the agency does not expect investment in new coal
plants to increase beyond what was already expected.
Russia,
which had been the world’s leading exporter of fossil fuels, is expected to be
hit especially hard by the energy disruptions it has largely created. As European
nations race to reduce their reliance on Russian oil and gas, Russia is likely
to face challenges in finding new markets in Asia, particularly for its natural
gas, the report said. As a result, Russian fossil fuel exports are unlikely to
return to their prewar levels.
But even
though the current energy crisis is expected to be a boon for cleaner
technologies in the long run, it is exacting a painful toll now, the report
found.
Governments
around the world have already committed roughly $500 billion this year to
shield consumers from soaring energy prices. And while European nations
currently appear to have enough natural gas in storage to get them through a
mild winter this year, the report warns that next winter in Europe “could be
even tougher” as stocks are drawn down and new supplies to replace Russian gas,
such as increased shipments from the United States or Qatar, are slow to come
online.
The
situation looks even more dire in developing countries such as Pakistan and
Bangladesh, which are facing energy shortages as deliveries of liquefied
natural gas are diverted to Europe. Nearly 75 million people around the world
who recently gained access to electricity are likely to lose it this year, the
report said. If that happens, it would be the first time in a decade that the
number of people worldwide who lack access to modern energy has risen.
There is
still a possibility that soaring energy prices could produce social unrest and
pushback against climate and clean energy policies in some countries. While the
report concluded that climate change policies are not chiefly responsible for
the spike in prices — instead, it notes
that renewable power and home weatherization efforts have actually blunted the
impact of energy shocks in many regions — there is always the risk that
governments could feel pressured to change course, Dr. Birol said.
The new
report comes less than two weeks before nations are set to gather at U.N.
climate talks in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, where diplomats will discuss whether
and how to step up efforts to curb fossil fuel emissions and provide more
financial aid from richer to poorer nations.
Separately
on Thursday, the United Nations released its annual “emissions gap” report
which details actions nations could take if they hope to slash emissions
roughly in half this decade and stabilize global warming at around 1.5 degrees
Celsius to avoid a drastic increase in heat waves, droughts, flooding and
wildfires across the globe.
The report
notes that most countries have now announced ambitious “net zero” emissions
goals — broad promises to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by a
certain date — that, if followed, could limit global warming to 1.8 degrees
Celsius. But the report says these targets are “currently not credible” since
most countries don’t have policies in place to achieve them.
And nations
have delayed so long in cutting emissions that they will now have to pursue
“rapid transformation of societies” to meet those net-zero goals, the report
said. That might include, for instance, rapidly phasing out conventional coal
power or ending the sale of gasoline-powered cars over the next decade.
“Can we
reduce greenhouse gas emissions by so much in that time frame? Perhaps not. But
we must try,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations
Environment Program, said in a statement. “Every fraction of a degree matters:
to vulnerable communities, to species and ecosystems, and to every one of us.”
Brad Plumer
is a climate reporter specializing in policy and technology efforts to cut
carbon dioxide emissions. At The Times, he has also covered international
climate talks and the changing energy landscape in the United States. @bradplumer
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