Paris, Oct 24 (EFE).- The peak consumption of coal, oil and gas will arrive this decade, something unforeseen by the International Energy Agency, which said this pace is insufficient as it would lead to a global warming of 2.4C.
In its global outlook report published Tuesday, the agency said the accumulated warming so far is already about 1.2C and will double by the end of the century with current dynamics.
This is despite Executive Director Fatih Birol saying the transition to clean energy is underway with the only question being how long it would take to materialize.
The agency said it still considers it “possible, but very difficult” to be able to meet the objective of limiting it to 1.5C that the international community set itself with the Paris Agreement in 2015, and that would first require a much more marked inflection than what was anticipated in the use of fossil fuels.
Even if the ceiling is reached this decade for each of them, something supposed to be happening with coal and due to happen by 2030 with oil and gas, with a peak for emissions around 2025, they will continue to cover about 73 percent of global energy demand.
In the case of oil, the demand coming from the transportation sector has taken an unprecedented turn.
If in 2020 one in every 25 new cars sold in the world was electric, this year it will be almost one in five and the movement is accelerating more than the authors of the study had anticipated.
For example, the massive subsidy system implemented by the Joe Biden Administration in the US with the Inflation Reduction Act will ensure that in 2030 in that country half of the new cars that go on the market will be electric.
On a global scale, the percentage will be 40 percent (last year the agency anticipated 25 percent) with 40 million units annually. This was with policies announced so far, assuming there will be no new pushes.
Another central element of the panorama between now and the end of the decade are renewables, which will account for 80 percent of the new electricity generation capacities in this period, and of that total, photovoltaic solar installations will account for more than half.
As impressive as this increase may seem, the agency’s experts said the potential for expansion of this technology is much greater. Although by 2030 solar panels could be manufactured worldwide to install 1,200 gigawatts per year, current policies would only allow the installation 500 gigawatts each year
That is to say, if measures were taken to strengthen electrical networks and electricity storage, much more renewable generation could be integrated, which would cut in advance the use of fossil fuels, and first of all coal, especially in China. EFE
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