Page 32 - bne Magazine August 2022

32 I Companies & Markets bne August 2022
Temperatures
2022 has seen heatwaves come early to Asia and Europe, while the Arctic is now heating up seven times faster than the rest of the world, with the region’s ice in danger of melting completely by 2050.
Such unprecedented increases in temperature in the Arctic threaten to make efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, limit global warming and deal with climate change almost worthless.
Iran recorded in June one of the hottest days, 52.2°C, since records began, while in the French resort town of Biarritz, temperatures reached 42.9°C on 18 June, the hottest ever June day in the town.
The world could also see more life-threatening heatwaves from Asia to Europe to the Americas, turning inhabited regions into scorched deserts and pushing millions of people to migrate in search of more bearable temperatures.
Such extremes prompt the public to worry that world leaders are focusing more on the war in Ukraine than climate change, which has the potential to wipe out the human race as temperatures rise, crops fail and swathes of land become uninhabitable.
Myllyvirta warned that high temperatures threaten to see an increase in fossil fuel burning, even though he argues that renewables offer a cheaper way out.
“With the high fuel prices, and with electricity being very tight, and demand for AC [air conditioning], it can also lead to more support for fossil fuel power plant. That is certainly what we are seeing in China, even as the government is careful to say that these plants do not increase fossil fuel generation overall, but to meet demand peaks,” he said.
“There is no economic case for more fossil fuels, even to meet peaks, in places with good solar resources.”
However, he warned that political change moves slowly, and “it is going to be the media that drives debate when heatwaves happen. For that to translate into meaningful policy changes, let alone political changes, will take time.”
Policy changes that will have a deep impact on the environment and climate change need to be long-term developments, and not the knee-jerk reactions to rising temperatures or war in Ukraine.
Indeed, Myllyvirta expressed confidence that the underlying economics of renewable energy, which will continue to undercut fossil fuels as the years progress, mean that distractions from the climate change agenda, such as war and high prices, will not slow down the energy transition as long as the fundamentals are in place.
It will become more and more obvious to government and companies over the next decades that green energy is cheaper and more profitable than oil and gas. The money that is currently spent on fossil fuels will then be freed up to be invested in renewables energy.
While the economics of renewables energy seem secure, and the policymaking processes in governments and international organisations from COP26 to the UN and the IEA are well-established, political support is less certain, as politicians chase votes and look for quick-fix way to secure cheaper energy.
What cannot be denied any more is that the climate and
the planet are in crisis, and that rising heatwaves, melting polar ice caps, failing crops and food insecurity are very real symptoms of man-made global warming.
The path to affordable, stable and predictable energy is resilient, and most importantly, cheap, enough to weather the storms of politicians and governments reacting to the latest global crises.
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