Europe will be 70% renewable by 2040 (but it won't be enough)
Energy — di Andrea Barolini
Bloomberg's “New Energy Outlook” confirms the renewable energy boom — but explains that the road ahead is still uphill.
Europe will be 70% renewable by 2040 (but it won't be enough)
Bloomberg's “New Energy Outlook” confirms the renewable energy boom — but explains that the road ahead is still uphill.
Renewable energy is set for a genuine boom in the coming years, both in Europe and in the United States. Thanks to falling production costs for wind turbines and solar panels, clean energy sources will supply up to 70 per cent of electricity in the countries of the Old Continent by 2040. And in the US, they will manage to overtake gas.
The steady and determined growth of the renewables sector is confirmed by the "New Energy Outlook 2016", compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which explains that the trajectory projected for the industry represents a doubling compared with current figures. Today, clean energy sources supply 32 per cent of production in Europe, and they will indeed go on to exceed two-thirds. The United States is less advanced on this front, where the share of renewables in the energy mix currently stands at around 14 per cent (and will reach 44 per cent by 2040). For the US, this is nonetheless a strong result: despite those who envisaged gas — above all "shale" — as the country's future, it will be clean energy sources that supply the majority of production.
The falling cost of renewables will be decisive
"Gas and coal prices will remain low in the future," reads the Bloomberg report, "but this will not prevent a fundamental transformation of the global electricity system over the coming decades, towards renewable energy sources such as wind and solar." In particular, gas will be overtaken by clean sources as early as 2027; however, it will be necessary to wait until 2037 for the same to happen with coal.
The growth of renewables will be driven in particular by falling costs in solar technologies (a projected -60 per cent between now and 2040) and wind technologies (-41 per cent). In this way they will become by far the cheapest sources in numerous countries around the world as early as 2020, and in almost every part of the planet by 2030.
Electricity demand, meanwhile, is expected to grow, partly due to the impact of electric vehicles: according to Bloomberg, these will account for 35 per cent of sales in 2040, with around 41 million units worldwide. To this must be added a general expansion of the battery market, linked above all to the need to store output generated by solar photovoltaics.
"It won't be enough to meet the Cop 21 targets"
In terms of investment, the forecast is for no less than 7.8 trillion dollars to flow into the green energy sector between now and 2040. In the same year, by contrast, financing for fossil fuel sources is not expected to exceed 2.1 trillion dollars.
Nevertheless, according to the report, these figures will not be sufficient to follow the "road map" required to limit the increase in average global surface temperature to two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. Bloomberg explains that, in order to do so, investment in renewables will need to increase by a further 5.3 trillion dollars over the coming decades.