An updated “road map” for combating climate change pours cold water on the idea that unproven technologies can play an important role in averting catastrophe.
Today, the International Energy Agency (IEA) updated its roadmap for the energy sector to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It halves the need for a rapid transition to renewable energy, while minimizing the use of technologies that are still largely at our disposal. at the demonstration and prototype stage, including carbon capture and hydrogen fuel.
The IEA, originally created to protect the world’s oil supply, unveiled its landmark roadmap in 2021 with a stark forecast for fossil fuels: calling for no more investment in new oil, gas and coal projects. It outlines the steps every country on Earth must take to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming to around 1.5 degrees Celsius by achieving zero emissions. But the planet is still warming, reaching 1.2 degrees Celsius, causing more extreme weather and climate disasters and prompting the IEA to revise its global roadmap to take account of new realities.
The biggest difference in this new report is that the new technologies that have generated a lot of hype as high-tech tools to solve climate change will now play a much smaller role than expected in 2021. These technologies, including hydrogen fuel cells for heavy vehicles and devices that filter CO2 emissions from smokestacks or ambient air, now provide 35 percent reductions in emissions, up from nearly 50 percent.
why They just didn’t live up to the hype as the report clearly stated.
“I think there’s some realism to it, and I’m curious how that realism from this report will translate to those industries,” said Dave Jones, lead global analytics expert at energy think tank Ember.
Today, “hydrogen production is more of a climate problem than a climate solution,” the report said. Hydrogen as a fuel is nothing new, but most of it is still produced using gas. Some countries, including the US, are investing in making hydrogen more sustainable by using renewable energy or fossil fuels in combination with carbon capture. If it takes off, it could create cleaner fuel for planes, ships or trucks.
But building the infrastructure to transport hydrogen is proving to be a bigger hurdle than expected, Jones says. On the other hand, the electric charging infrastructure, although limited, is developing much faster. The IEA’s updated roadmap cuts the share of fuel cell electric heavy-duty vehicles by 40 percent in 2050 compared to the original 2021 forecast.
The roadmap also reduces the role of carbon capture technologies by about 40 percent in reducing emissions from electricity generation. “So far, the story [of carbon sequestration] has largely been one of underwhelming expectations,” says a new IEA report. According to a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office, the US Department of Energy (DOE) spent hundreds of millions of dollars on failed carbon capture projects largely because of “factors affecting their economic viability.”
“Removing carbon from the atmosphere is very expensive. We must do everything possible to stop its placement,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in a press release. If pollution doesn’t fall fast enough and the planet warms more than 1.5 degrees, countries may try to use carbon capture technologies that are “expensive and unproven at scale” to try to reverse that warming, the press release said. But reliance on these technologies would lead to increased climate risks.
By 2030, global renewable energy capacity must triple to completely stop generating planet-warming pollution, the report says. Clean energy spending is set to more than double from $1.8 trillion this year to $4.5 trillion early next decade. Energy efficiency must also double in the same time frame, and the world’s richest countries must achieve zero emissions several years before the global 2050 target.
The timing for this updated roadmap is of the essence. It follows the UN’s first global report on how well countries are tackling climate change. In short, they have fallen behind as emissions continue to rise despite the need to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.
The UN held a climate summit in New York last week to push countries to ramp up their clean energy commitments, but heads of state from the countries with the biggest carbon footprints — China and the US — didn’t participate. They’ll have another shot during a larger UN climate conference that starts in Dubai in November.