A study brings environmentalists and oil companies together on the importance of reducing CO2 emissions (now) and kick-starting the energy transition.
Twenty years and the world's electricity could be generated entirely from renewable sources. Were that to happen, global carbon emissions could be halved, making it genuinely possible to limit global warming to below 2°C. This is the challenge set out in the new report Better energy, greater prosperity, drawn up by the Energy Transitions Commission (Etc), an organisation founded in 2015 to promote climate agreements, whose members include bankers, university professors and representatives of international institutions from both the environmental and the oil and mining industries, among them executives from Royal Dutch Shell, Bhp Billiton and General Electric Oil & Gas.
The study, presented on 25 April, takes an optimistic view of the possibility of reducing carbon emissions by 30 per cent by 2040. "Our challenge is to build an energy system that can expand access to modern, sustainable and reliable energy services at affordable prices while allowing the global economy to prosper," the report states. It is on this basis that Etc is calling on governments, investors and businesses to seize the opportunity by acting now to accelerate the deployment of clean energy and decarbonisation.
The Energy Transitions Commission's optimism is grounded in the progress of clean technologies: solar, wind and other renewables are today technically reliable, economically competitive and capable of supporting economic development, particularly in emerging countries. The costs of solar and wind are falling to such an extent that Etc expects that by 2035 many countries will be able to have an energy system running on almost 100 per cent renewables at an all-in cost (generation, transmission and storage) of less than 70 dollars per megawatt-hour. A price at that level would cause demand for coal, oil and gas to collapse and have negative effects on the traditional energy industry.
Etc argues for the need to break once and for all the link between economic and social growth and the growth of energy-related CO2 emissions, moving towards a zero-emissions economy. Today, the global economic system is based almost exclusively on fossil fuels, which still supply 80 per cent of total energy consumption and are responsible for 75 per cent of the greenhouse gases present on our planet. If this system were to remain unchanged, by the end of the century the world could be as much as 4°C warmer than pre-industrial levels.
Despite their considerable differences, all members of Etc converge on the importance of reducing carbon emissions to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement, as well as on how this transition can be achieved while promoting social and economic progress. According to the Energy Transitions Commission, achieving this goal will depend on the ability to simultaneously deliver three steps:
In doing so, emissions could be cut from the current 36 gigatonnes per year to 20 gigatonnes in 2040. In parallel, it could be possible to give every person access to 80–100 gigajoules of clean energy (electricity, transport, heating, …), the minimum condition for an acceptable standard of living.
The technologies that could make decarbonisation of the economy possible already exist, but they require the support of adequate policies that tackle the problem decisively. Only in this way can the targets for curbing emissions and limiting temperature rises be achieved.
