What the future of energy will be like. Aie-Ft report
Hydrogen is rapidly establishing itself as an essential element in the energy transition, but for now the demand for oil is growing: this is what the future of energy will look like
The IEA is confident in the recovery but gloomy in the transition
The new IEA World Energy Outlook is available from today: the third major energy projection, after that of BP and OPEC, since the pandemic has shaken all forecast models.
Its central prediction – the Stated Policies Scenario, or Steps – is surprisingly optimistic about the global recovery from Covid-19, assuming the virus will "gradually be brought under control in 2021," allowing the global economy to regain its pre- virus already next year. But CO2 emissions from energy will also continue to rise – reports the FT.
One thing is clear: there is good news for clean energy. The pandemic was more favorable to renewables than fossil fuels, the report said. Energy demand will end up being 5 percent lower in 2020 than last year and energy-related emissions will drop by 7 percent. The consumption of the two dirtiest energy sources, oil and coal, is set to decrease by 8 and 7 percent respectively. Demand for clean energy this year will be higher than last year.
The pandemic has been particularly dire for poor countries, and energy poverty is worsening. Five hundred and eighty million people in sub-Saharan Africa will end up without access to electricity this year. This reverses several years of progress, says the IEA .
Covid-19 "catalysed a structural decline in global coal demand," the IEA says, and the story of coal growth is now over. Demand is not recovering to pre-crisis levels, and its share of the energy mix falls below 20% for the first time since the industrial revolution of 2040.
Solar PV is now "consistently cheaper" than new coal or gas plants in most countries and solar projects "now offer some of the lowest electricity costs ever seen." Renewable energies meet 80% of electricity growth up to 2030. Solar, says the IEA, is "the new king of electricity supply and looks set for massive expansion", with 13% growth for all. year into the next decade. (And it does it even better on the Sustainable Development Scenario).
The central scenario depicted in Steps will offer modest comfort to the oil industry. Yes, he declares that "the era of growing global oil demand will end within 10 years". What the IEA calls the end of oil demand is, in its core scenario, a sweet plateau, including even modest annual increases. According to Steps, the world will burn a little more oil in 2040 than it will in 2030, when it will burn more oil than it did in 2019.
Transportation, in particular, maintains its position as a terminal of oil demand, increasing by 3.5m b / d until 2030, after efficiency improvements and fuel changes. This is an almost as bullish outlook for oil demand in the transportation sector as OPEC offered in its long-term forecast last week.
In fact, the pandemic-related changes in behavior will increase the demand for oil somewhat, according to the IEA. Forget all those canceled flights, telecommuting and empty commuter parking spaces. The shift from public transport to private cars, the delay in buying new cars and consumer preference for SUVs will far outweigh the losses in demand.
The environmental prospects are still dire. CO2 emissions, which fell by 7 percent this year, will rise above the 2019 level in 2027. Air pollution “causes nearly 6 million premature deaths in 2030. . . about 10 percent more than today ".
“The pandemic and its aftermath may suppress emissions, but low economic growth is not a low-carbon strategy. Only an acceleration of structural changes in the way the world produces and consumes energy can definitively break the trend in emissions, ”notes the IEA.
Much depends on the speed of recovery from the pandemic. A darker lagged recovery scenario (DRS) would see the world economy return to normal only in 2023 – and the impact would be huge. In the DRS, the global economy in 2030 is 10% smaller than that of Steps. Other findings include:
A slowdown of "many of the structural changes that are essential for clean energy transitions".
“A systematic under-investment in new cleaner energy technologies”.
A weakening of the growth in oil demand, with a plateau of consumption just above 2019 levels in 2030.
A persistent surplus of natural gas supply.
A drop in CO2 emissions, but mainly due to the economic crisis.
Basically, the IEA says that "if today's energy infrastructure continued to function as it did in the past, it would block a 1.65 degrees Celsius temperature rise by itself." For this reason, its more climate-friendly SDS envisages not only a greater and faster deployment of green energy, but “the functioning of current carbon-intensive assets in a very different way from that of Steps”. In other words: carbon capture, conversion or closure of coal plants.
Huge capital will also be needed to transform the world's energy infrastructure – more than $ 2 billion compared to $ 1.6 billion in recent years, according to the IEA.
Governments will need to be more involved than they've been, the agency says. A "change of pace" in clean energy investments could foster economic recovery, create jobs, leave cities with cleaner air and reduce emissions. Yet despite the many talks ("rebuild better", "green recovery", etc.), few countries outside Europe are taking it seriously, the IEA notes.
As for the zero emission plans (another scenario devised by the IEA, called “NZE2050”), the agency is absolutely pessimistic.
Hydrogen is rapidly establishing itself as an essential element in the energy transition. The number of large-scale “green” hydrogen projects – where the fuel is produced from renewable energy – in the pipeline amounts to more than 60GW of capacity, according to research from Rystad Energy.
But costs remain high and less than half of that capacity will likely be brought online by 2035, Rystad says. As ES noted earlier, government support to cut costs will be the key to scaling up.
(Extract from the foreign press review by Epr)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/come-sara-il-futuro-dellenergia-report-aie-ft/ on Sun, 18 Oct 2020 05:20:59 +0000.