Which is it to be – optimism or despair as we head towards the latest UN meeting on climate change, COP28, starting next month?

This summer’s EI Statistical Review of World Energy suggests the latter, with 2022 showing a second year of growth in global energy use (1%) and subsequent carbon emissions (0.8%). COVID-19-affected 2020 had seen rare and temporary reductions in both, which were reversed in 2021. Despite strong progress with new renewables, last year the dominance of fossil fuels was largely unchanged at almost 82% of total consumption.

So, pessimism and gloom then, plus mounting concern as extreme weather events become more frequent, widespread and powerful than ever. Data so far suggests that, globally, 2023 will be the warmest since records began. Meanwhile, some governments in Europe, notably the UK, have begun to backpedal on their schedules for cutting carbon emissions.

Positive developments
Yet there is also optimism, elucidated most recently by a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) covered last week in New Energy World, that the surprising pace of growth in clean energy projects around the world may yet save the day. Limiting global heating to 1.5°C may still be possible, although progress must be rapidly accelerated.

The IEA first published a ‘global pathway’ for policymakers and financiers to keep the 1.5°C goal within reach back in 2021 and updated this in September to reflect changes to the energy landscape since then – notably extraordinary growth in some clean energy technologies, but alongside stubbornly high emissions.

Record growth in both solar power and electric vehicles (EVs) is in line with a pathway towards net zero emissions globally by mid-century, says the report, and industry plans are in place to roll-out the manufacturing capacity to make them happen. The significance is that solar and EVs would deliver a third of the necessary emissions reductions to 2030, says the IEA.

But success will require considerably bolder action during this decade to deliver the necessary tripling of renewables by 2030 and a doubling of improvements in energy efficiency, together with sharp rises in the sales of EVs and heat pumps. In the other direction, methane emissions must fall by 75%. Taken together, the IEA says that these moves would deliver more than 80% of the reductions needed by 2030.

Optimism indeed. While it is highly ambitious and almost revolutionary in scope, the IEA says its global pathway is achievable, given strong international cooperation. As if to back this up, a new report from climate think tank Ember suggests that carbon emissions from the global electricity sector may peak this year.

Limiting global heating to 1.5°C may still be possible, though progress must be rapidly accelerated.

Challenges to overcome
Of course, there are several challenges to following such a revolutionary path – neatly summarised by BloombergNEF’s Michael Liebreich in a recent blog concentrating on the difficulties.

First: cost. Despite the costs of wind and solar power plummeting in recent years, those of last resort back-up generation have not. Second: the very substantial task of expanding and reinforcing electricity grids to transport electricity to heavily electrified users – and, again, the cost of doing so. Third: sourcing and supplying specialist minerals for batteries and EVs, and copper and aluminium for more extensive electricity grids.

Liebreich’s fourth challenge is politics. Even in wellbehaved Europe, support for moving to net zero is not universal, he writes, and in poorer countries, much less so. People in the developing world have more immediate problems to deal with. He also mentions what he calls ‘corruption, predatory delay and regulatory capture’ – where potential losers in the energy transition game use their power and wealth to obstruct progress in order to protect their livelihoods and assets.

I don’t suppose either the IEA or BloombergNEF foresaw the recent moves by the current UK government to delay some of the previously agreed steps towards net zero. While the postponement of some close deadlines for ending sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles, and gas boilers, was hardly a major U-turn on net zero, nor was it an example of accelerating progress. The government insists its commitment to net zero by 2050 is solid, yet getting there will surely be more difficult if we ease up for a while now.

The government go-ahead to developers of a major new oil and gas field to the west of Shetland is something else. Carbon emissions from the process of recovering oil and gas from the UK Continental Shelf are a little smaller than some from more distant sources. But the rather larger emissions connected to their combustion are just as damaging. And I have seen no announcement of corresponding oil and gas fields elsewhere being cancelled.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are strictly those of the author only and are not necessarily given or endorsed by or on behalf of the Energy Institute.