Page 7 - AfrElec Week 43 2022

AfrElec COMMENTARY AfrElec

Inger Andersen, under-secretary-general of is nowhere near soon enough to meet the Paris
the United Nations and executive director of goals, a conclusion shared by the UNEP report.
the UNEP, noted that NDCs, sometimes called
pledges, updated since COP26 had only shaved IEA report’s 2.5 °C
less than 1% off projected greenhouse gas emis- The IEA’s report stressed that the war in
sions in 2030, far off the 45% reduction – over Ukraine had had a deep impact on global green
and above current policies – the report identified politics and investment, effectively nudging the
to meet 1.5°C. world towards green technology.
“The science from UNEP’s Emissions Gap The report referred to such responses as the
Report and indeed science presented by our US Inflation Reduction Act, the EU’s Fit for 55
friends at the UNFCCC and the WMO earlier package and REPowerEU, Japan’s Green Trans-
this week is resounding: we are sliding from cli- formation (GX) programme, and ambitious
mate crisis to climate disaster,” she warned. clean energy targets in China and India. These
“We need a root-and-branch redesign of the could rise global clean energy investment to $2
electricity sector, of the transport sector, of the trillion per year by 2030, 50% more than today.
building sector and of food systems. And we The IEA said that today’s prevailing policy
need to reform financial systems so that they can settings – which it calls the Stated Policies Sce-
bankroll the transformations we cannot escape,” nario – could make every fossil fuel exhibit a
she said. peak or plateau in demand in the coming years.
Put simply, the world is nowhere near meet- For coal, the plateau would be about 2025, for gas
ing the Paris Agreements goals if the track record the end of the decade and for oil the mid-2030s.
of the past year is anything to go by. This means that total demand for fossil fuels
declines steadily from the mid-2020s to 2050.
Hastening the transition The IES said that the way to reduce emissions
The UNEP’s dire warnings contrast with the and to meet the Paris targets is for governments
International Energy Agency’s small ray of hope and corporations to undertake a rapid increase
is the form of its World Energy Outlook 2022. in investment in green technology.
The IEA said that the global energy crisis could For example, the IEA predicts that current
be a historic turning point towards a cleaner and investment trends will raise green spending
more secure future, with demand for fossil fuels to $2 trillion per year by 2030, as set out in the
set to peak by around 2025. report’s States Policies Scenario. However, to
The crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of reach net zero emissions by 2050, investment
Ukraine is causing profound and long-lasting must reach $4 trillion, or twice as much as cur-
changes that have the potential to hasten the rently planned, by 2030.
transition to a more sustainable and secure Investment and supportive government pol-
energy system. icies are needed to develop both green technol-
Yet even with this 2025 peak, the report ogy, led by solar PV, wind, EVs and batteries,
warned that it still predicted that global warming Despite these welcome trends, pushed for-
could only be limited to 2.5°C by 2100 if current ward by the war in Ukraine disrupting global
government policies continue. The 2025 peak energy systems, the main takeaway is that the
would also allow the share of fossil fuels in the world is still far from being able to contain cli-
global energy mix could fall from around 80% mate change.
just now to just above 60% by 2050. Global CO2 Only major and rapid changes in energy
emissions would fall back slowly from a high spending priorities that will cause major disloca-
point of 37 billion tonnes per year to 32 billion tion to global political and economic systems can
tonnes by 2050. even come close to meeting the Paris targets.™
While welcome, the 2025 peak in fossil fuels

Week 43 26•October•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P7