The International Energy Agency says global
offshore wind capacity may increase
15-fold and attract around $1 trillion of cumulative investment by 2040, driven
by falling costs, supportive government policies and some remarkable
technological progress, such as larger turbines and floating foundations. It
notes that the offshore wind capacity in the EU stands at almost 20 GW. Under
current policy settings, that is set to rise to nearly 130 GW by 2040. However,
if the EU reaches its carbon-neutrality aims, offshore wind capacity would jump
to around 180 GW by 2040 and be the region’s largest single power source. Meantime,
it notes that China’s offshore wind capacity is set to rise from 4 GW now to
110 GW by 2040.
Policies designed to meet global
sustainable energy goals could push that to over 170 GW.
The IEA says ‘The huge promise of offshore wind is underscored by the development of
floating turbines that could be deployed further out at sea. In theory, they
could enable offshore wind to meet the entire electricity demand of several key
electricity markets several times over, including Europe, the USA & Japan’.
In its subsequent World Energy Outlook (WEO), the IEA
says solar could be even larger: ‘Solar PV becomes the
largest component of global installed capacity’ in its 2040 scenario. And together with on shore and
offshore wind, it claims that ‘ the expansion
of generation from wind and solar PV helps renewables overtake coal in the
power generation mix in the mid-2020s. By 2040, low-carbon sources provide more
than half of total electricity generation. Wind and solar PV are the star
performers, but hydropower (15% of total generation in 2040) and nuclear (8%)
retain major shares’.
The International Renewable Energy
Agency’s latest estimates are even more optimistic- it too says PV will lead in capacity terms, with maybe 8.5TW by 2050 supplying 25%
of world electricity, but wind would lead in output terms, with 6TW supplying 35%.
But emissions still rise…
Nevertheless, despite these positive projections, in the
new WEO, the IEA, rather gloomily, says that the
world’s CO2 emissions are set to continue rising for decades, despite the
‘profound shifts’ already underway in the global energy system. Under its central ‘Stated Policies Scenario’
(STEPS), formerly known as the ‘New Policies Scenario’, 49% of energy demand
will be met by renewables, but gas use is also expected to rise rapidly,
although that means it will overtake coal to become the second largest energy
source after oil- and that will start leveling off in the 2030s.
Even so, as demand rises, emissions
still keep rising. So the IEA sees carbon capture and negative emission technologies (NETs) as being vital. It says that
a cumulative total of around 300bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) would need to be
removed to bridge the gap that its sees opening up between the STEP and its
(roughly) Paris-agreement compatible Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS),
aiming to keep to a 1.5 C temperature rise. The IEA does note that there are
concerns over the sustainability and deliverability of NETs, and it says that it would be possible ‘to construct a scenario that goes further than the Sustainable
Development Scenario and delivers a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5C
without any reliance on net-negative emissions on the basis of a zero carbon
world by 2050.’
However, it says, to go beyond SDS, the world would need to tackle ‘hard to abate’ sectors,
such as aviation, heavy industry and heat for buildings and tackling some of
these areas would require social acceptance & behavioural change: ‘This
is not something that is within the power of the energy sector alone to
deliver. It would be a task for society as a whole…Change on a massive scale
would be necessary across a very broad front, and would impinge directly on the
lives of almost everyone.’
Demand keeps rising
The message thus seems to be that,
if we don’t want a lot of social changes to cut energy demand, we need NETs
since we will still be using a lot of fossil fuel. There are other views. We
could expand renewables much more, and push energy efficiency much harder. The
IEA has lamented the lack of progress on efficiency- although there has been
some. In a separate
report , Energy Efficiency 2019, it notes that, as a
result of policies, technology and markets, the intensity of the world’s energy
use improved by 1.2% last year. However, this was the slowest rate of
improvement since 2010 and the third year in a row that the rate has declined, to
well below the 3% minimum that IEA says is central to achieving global climate
and energy goals.
It is a bit more hopeful about the future. In its new WEO, it claims that energy demand will only rise by 1% p.a., about
half the average rate of 2% seen since 2000, due to shifts towards less
energy-intensive industries, energy efficiency gains and market ‘saturation’
effects, for example, where demand for new cars reaches a peak. However, it says that the use of electricity
will grow ‘at more than double the pace of overall energy
demand in the Stated Policies Scenario, confirming its place at the heart of
modern economies.’ Even in SDS, ‘electricity is one of the few energy
sources that sees growing consumption in 2040 - mainly due to electric vehicles
- alongside the direct use of renewables, and hydrogen. The share of
electricity in final consumption, less than half that of oil today, overtakes
oil by 2040’.
In the IEA STEPS
scenario, about half of that power would be supplied by renewables and it has of
late taken a more bullish line on them- as noted above, it now sees offshore
wind as a major option, and has upgraded its previously rather conservative
predictions on likely PV growth. As a result, the IEA’s revised
STEPS has significantly increased the prospects for renewables, raising the
solar total for 2040 by 23% and that for wind by 11%. It even says that the cost
declines for wind & PV are ‘bolstering
the economic case for switching directly from coal to renewables’, rather
than using gas as a ‘bridge’ to low-carbon sources.
That’s a
welcome change, but it’s been awhile coming- and it’s still (in STEP) only
talking about 50% of power from renewables by 2040, whereas there are many much more radical scenarios, with renewable
moving up to near 100% by then, in terms of both power, and in some cases also
energy. For example, IRENAs
new
report on wind futures says that accelerated wind deployment, coupled with increased electrification,
could enable it to cover 35% of global power needs by 2050 and become the
world’s lead power source in output terms, with costs from onshore wind falling
to less than $30/MWh by 2050, and for offshore wind to below $70/MWh. Others
see PV solar as more likely to boom, as in LUT’s
scenarios. But either way there will be plenty of renewable
power.
The battle for the future
It is true that, as Carbon
Brief noted, electricity,
from whichever green source, is only part of the story, and that it is easier
to decarbonise electricity than heat and transport, but green power can be used
for those sectors (indeed that is the current plan) and so can non-electricity
green energy, including direct solar and biomass. We could try to ramp all of that up, and
efficiency too, very much faster, as LUT, Jacobson and many others have suggested- see
Jacobson’s new
scenario, confirming that 100% of all power
is possible globally by 2050.
Instead, the default position for
the IEA always seems to be fossil fuel, and so it opts for CCS/NETs, or failing
that, nuclear, though that now seems to have taken more of a backseat, despite
the IEA lamenting the slow down. So, as ever, the fate of the world still hangs
on oil and gas! The IEA claims that ‘Shale output from
the US is set to stay higher for longer than previously projected, reshaping
global markets, trade flows & security. In the Stated Policies Scenario,
annual US production growth slows from the breakneck pace seen in recent years,
but the US still accounts for 85% of the increase in global oil production to
2030, and for 30% of the increase in gas. By 2025, total US shale output (oil
& gas) overtakes total oil and gas production from Russia’. That may or may not be true, or desirable, but
there are other possible futures.
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