The expansion of renewable energy use continues globally, but there are some big issues. For example, the EU got 38% of its power from renewables in 2020. It has been led by Germany, whose renewable power output has now outpaced its fossil fuel power output. But it still has to deal with left-over nuclear costs e.g. the German government has agreed to pay EOn, EnBW, RWE & Vattenfall almost €2.5bn in compensation for the forced ‘premature’ closure of their nuclear plants.
A big issue is whether it is fair for the nuclear companies to get compensation essentially for loss of nuclear earnings. Won’t that slow the growth of renewables? They have certainly been slow to develop in France where, until recently, nuclear has ruled the roost. The UK has done a bit better, with offshore wind especially, but, obscurely, it is still pushing for more nuclear, while dragging its feet on providing proper support for PV solar and on-shore wind.
Meanwhile, China is getting around 28% of its electricity from renewables, mostly from hydro. Nuclear is only at around 5%. The rest is from coal. A big issue is - how fast can coal use be reduced? It’s not looking good. China may be able to expand renewables to perhaps 35% by 2030, but energy demand is still rising and that will be met with coal. Under the new Five Year plan, China has committed to reduce emissions per unit of GDP by 18% between 2020 and 2025 – but that’s the same target as was set in the previous five-year plan. And there is no target for limiting total energy consumption and no overall carbon emissions cap, which campaigners had been calling for. Climate Change News said ‘This leaves room for emissions to continue to increase to 2025, deferring the heavy lifting on decarbonisation until later this decade’.
The situation in the Russian Federation is even worse. Its current target, initially set for 2020 but now delayed to 2024, is to generate 4.5% of its energy from renewables, excluding hydro– one of the lowest targets in the world. And it may not meet that. Though, in line with the Paris Climate Accord, it has signed up to a target of 20-30% emissions cut by 2030. Whether it will meet that is unclear- it seems to be doing the minimum possible, although it recently moved its aim to nearer the 30% end.
Looking longer term, a draft long-term climate strategy, published March 2019, showed the government was considering reducing its emissions by up to 48% from 1990 levels by 2050 under an ‘intensive scenario’. This, Climate Change News said, ‘would allow Russia’s emissions to continue to rise for at least another nine years before reducing them just above 2017 levels, far from the 2050 net zero goal demanded by the UN’. And the draft said Russia would achieve carbon neutrality ‘in the second half of the 21st century, closer to its end.’ Can it really wait that long to diversity from fossil reliance?
What about the USA? Renewables should do well under Biden, but he is not rushing things, compared to the scale and pace of what would need to be done to cut emissions significantly. His approach is certainly less radical than the Green New Deal pushed by Bernie Sanders, which pushed renewables hard and avoided nuclear, and carbon capture fixes for continued fossil fuel use. But it is early days: we will have to wait to see what emerges. Biden has spoken of $5 trillion in public and private finance to support the ecological transition in the US over the next decade, an amount which is close to Europe’s assessment of €4 trillion to finance its own transition.
While the EU obviously is a major player these days, the main political & economic hegemony battle arguably concerns the USA and China. As part of that, China has been doing well on green energy technology, leading the world in national capacity terms and also exporting a lot of cheap PV solar cells. China was No.1 in Ernst and Young’s global attractiveness league for renewable investment in 2019. However, it was then pushed to No. 2 by the USA, where, despite Trumps policies, low cost renewables had boomed, replacing old, and also new, coal and nuclear capacity. That process should continue, but Biden may face economic problems in trying to get rapid expansion of renewables from their current 18% level, given that the US economy has suffered more from Covid 19, arguably worsened by Trumps poor responses. China, although not unscathed, dealt with Covid earlier and better and should now be able to return to something like business as usual. Although there is still much uncertainty - globally there is still all to play for, as stimulus programmes play out and the world economy restructures.
Big changes needed
The big global issue is - will all this be enough to avoid serious climate impacts? As indicated, there are problems with the big players, and, with some exceptions, the situation elsewhere is not much better, with, for example, Japan lagging behind and India and still splitting its efforts between nuclear and renewables. And, although the potential in Africa is huge, progress towards renewables in most countries there is generally slower than some had hoped.
However, the situation isn’t entirely grim. $303.5 bn was invested globally in new renewable energy capacity in 2020, up 2%, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and more may now follow as stimulus programmes get underway. Renewable energy investment was $81.8 bn up 52% in Europe, the highest since 2012, almost catching up with China, at $83.6 bn (down 12%). In the US, it fell 20% to $49.3 bn, but that should now change under Biden.And things may yet improve in Japan and India
We certainly do need some changes. It has been claimed that carbon dioxide emissions must fall by what would be expected from the equivalent of a global lockdown roughly every two years for the next decade for the world to keep within safe limits of global heating. There is a huge potential to cut demand by improving the efficiency of energy use, even taking account of possible rebound effects, and that should help make it possible in time for renewables to meet all our energy needs. The cost of renewables continues to fall, with the US National Renewable Research Lab putting the LCOE for wind and PV solar at under $40/MWh, so this is not the time to get sidetracked into expensive short-term carbon capture or nuclear fixes.
We really do need to get moving on renewables, and also energy efficiency, around the world. There are plenty of high/100% renewable scenarios around now, including a new complete global set from Wartsila/LUT, accessible via an interactive world map, and some new ones for the USA, but in my next post I look in detail at France- maybe a worst case, in that it is at present very heavily reliant on nuclear power.
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