Net Zero by 2050
A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector
A transition of the scale and speed described by the net zero pathway cannot be achieved without sustained support and participation from citizens. The changes will affect multiple aspects of people’s lives – from transport, heating and cooking to urban planning and jobs. We estimate that around 55% of the cumulative emissions reductions in the pathway are linked to consumer choices such as purchasing an EV, retrofitting a house with energy-efficient technologies or installing a heat pump. Behavioural changes, particularly in advanced economies – such as replacing car trips with walking, cycling or public transport, or foregoing a long-haul flight – also provide around 4% of the cumulative emissions reductions.
Providing electricity to around 785 million people that have no access and clean cooking solutions to 2.6 billion people that lack those options is an integral part of our pathway. Emissions reductions have to go hand-in-hand with efforts to ensure energy access for all by 2030. This costs around USD 40 billion a year, equal to around 1% of average annual energy sector investment, while also bringing major co-benefits from reduced indoor air pollution.
Some of the changes brought by the clean energy transformation may be challenging to implement, so decisions must be transparent, just and cost-effective. Governments need to ensure that clean energy transitions are people-centred and inclusive. Household energy expenditure as a share of disposable income – including purchases of efficient appliances and fuel bills – rises modestly in emerging market and developing economies in our net zero pathway as more people gain access to energy and demand for modern energy services increases rapidly. Ensuring the affordability of energy for households demands close attention: policy tools that can direct support to the poorest include tax credits, loans and targeted subsidies.
All fossil fuel exploration needs to end this year, IEA says
Renewable spending needs to double to $4 trillion per year by 2030.
Getting to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 will require a historic deployment of widespread renewable power, electric vehicles, and new technologies, many of which are only now in the prototype stage. To get a jump-start, we’ll need to double our investments in clean technologies to $4 trillion by the end of the decade. . .
Here . . .Bending the curve down to 1.5˚C will require overhauling just about every sector of the economy, hence the $4 trillion annual investment. It’s a significant sum, but it will also lift annual global GDP growth by 0.4 percent. Today, that number would add about $3.5 trillion in wealth worldwide.
Energy impacts
If global leaders started following the report’s recommendations tomorrow, the most significant—and immediate—impact would be the cessation of all new fossil fuel projects starting next year. Countries could continue extracting the oil, gas, and coal they’re currently exploiting, but they shouldn’t authorize any new exploration, drilling, or mining
. . .“I don’t think anyone expected this from the IEA. It is a huge turnaround on their part,” Dave Jones, an analyst at climate think tank Ember, told the Financial Times. “It has been very pro-fossil, so to come out with something like this is just amazing... This is truly a knife in the fossil fuel industry.”
The rapid ramp-down of overall fossil fuel use—from 80 percent of the energy mix today to 20 percent in 2050—would necessitate a phase-out across the entire economy.
And here : The IEA says that oil and gas demand should decline by 75 percent and 55 percent, respectively, and unabated coal demand needs to decline by 90 percent.
Getting to a majority renewable grid will require a fourfold increase in annual installations of wind and solar generating capacity by the end of the decade.
We’ll have to get more efficient, too. Over the next 30 years, as the world adds 2 billion people, overall demand should decline by 8 percent, which would require significant increases in energy efficiency across the economy.
Changes to transportation
With transportation contributing about 20 percent of emissions today, the way we move will have to be rapidly decarbonized, too. Sales of electric cars—already up in the wake of the pandemic and looming regulations—will have to grow eighteen-fold by 2030.
Trucking would be similarly electrified, though with more hydrogen. Around 65 percent would be battery-electric, and the other 35 percent that cover distances greater than 400 miles in a day would be powered by fuel cells. For maritime shipping, the IEA doesn’t anticipate the sector to reach net zero. Instead, it expects hydrogen and ammonia to capture 60 percent of the market. Rail, the other primary shipping mode, is almost an afterthought because it is so straightforward to electrify.
Then there’s air travel. . .
Housing and industry
Our homes and industry will have to change, too, though the IEA sees different pathways for each.
Natural gas will largely disappear from home use, with a small sliver of homes heated by hydrogen. . .
Industrial uses of energy, including steel, cement, and chemical production, will have to switch to hydrogen or rely on CCS. The IEA says that about 40 percent of the reductions in industrial emissions by 2030 can happen through recycling, waste reduction, and more intelligent use of materials in building construction and design.
New technologies
The IEA’s models after 2030 rely heavily on technologies currently in the prototype phase to keep warming to 1.5˚C. In fact, almost half the emissions reductions by 2050 are forecast to come from clean tech that is currently at the demonstration or prototype phase. Most of those innovations will have to address heavy industry or long-distance transportation.
Both sectors have lagged because finding clean tech that can replace energy-dense fossil fuels is difficult. Shipping and aviation will be the most challenging, which the IEA acknowledges, reserving a significant percentage of unabated emissions for both.
For industrial uses that we can’t easily electrify or replace, hydrogen has emerged as a leading candidate. The gas can always be burned, like a fossil fuel. It can also be used in clever ways to rethink how we make cement, which produces about 8 percent of emissions today. There’s also another source of hydrogen power—the Sun. The startup Heliogen has demonstrated that concentrated solar power can produce temperatures as high as 1,000˚C, which would be useful for the production of things like steel and cement
Put it in the ground
Some emissions are difficult to avoid, of course. Many net-zero forecasts address the problem of unavoidable emissions by relying on carbon offsets, a process that attempts to quantify how much carbon is sequestered when forests are preserved, for example. Offsets are controversial, though, because companies can easily game today’s schemes, and it's hard to guarantee that the offsets will remain valid in the distant future (a forest might burn, for example).
The IEA doesn’t rely on offsets for its roadmap, though. Instead, it turns to direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS). Both approaches suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and concentrate it for use or storage, but they go about it in different ways. Direct air capture modifies existing CCS technology to draw CO2 directly from the air (hence the name), while BECCS relies on chlorophyll. With BECCS, agricultural waste and fast-growing plants are collected and burned, with the resulting CO2 isolated for use or storage.
What it all means
The IEA is regarded as a relatively conservative agency. It’s a group that has consistently underestimated the growth of wind and solar power, in part because the agency takes a cautious approach to modeling by assuming linear rather than exponential growth (as is often the case with new technologies) and forecasting based on current climate policies rather than more aggressive targets.
This report is a significant stake in the ground for the IEA, and the agency’s serious reputation could help the roadmap become the factual basis for many arguments—policy, legal, and otherwise—against the continued development of fossil fuels.
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