Number Theory: Energy emissions will fall by 2025... but very slowly
At the rate of emissions seen in 2022, the world will exceed the benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius warming over pre-industrial levels in the next nine years, according to a 2022 report of the Global Carbon Project. This means the global carbon budget – the amount of emissions required to keep warming under this level – needs to be tracked every year. A report released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) on 8 February gives a disaggregated estimate of electricity emissions for 2022 (they account for about a third of total emissions) along with projections up to 2025. Here is what the report shows.
Emissions from electricity will decline marginally by 2025 due to rapid increase in renewable sources
Electricity generation added 13.21 Gt (gigatonnes or billion tonnes) of CO2 in 2022, 1.3% more than in 2021. However, a change in this sector is underway. According to IEA's projections, electricity emissions will decline at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 0.4% up to 2025. This is expected due to increased adoption of renewable and nuclear sources for electricity. To be sure, rough calculations suggest the pace of adoption of such non-fossil sources is still slower than needed. In absolute terms, the expected decline in emissions from electricity generation amounts 0.055 Gt CO2 per year until 2025. The world needs to decrease emissions by 1.4 Gt CO2 per year to reach net zero emissions by 2050, according to the 2022 Global Carbon Budget report.
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Who is doing their bit in reducing electricity emissions?
The answer to this question is not as simple as one might expect. In absolute terms, the answer seems to be Europe and the Americas, which will reduce their coal and gas electricity generation by 409 Terawatt hour (TWh) and 201 TWh by 2025. However, the global decline will be only of 86 TWh because other regions increasing generation from dirty sources. However, this does not necessarily mean that the latter are not doing their bit. For example, countries in the Asia Pacific region are expected to increase coal and gas electricity generation the most in absolute terms, but they are also increasing renewable and nuclear generation the most. In other words, it is the demand growth in this region that will increase the use of so-called dirty electricity here. The net result will be that the share of fossil sources in the region's total electricity generation will actually decrease by 5.8 percentage points by 2025.
Nonetheless, one can argue, as developed countries do, that developing nations should decrease their use of fossil sources for electricity even faster given the small carbon budget they have. This is an ongoing debate in global climate negotiations. Developing countries' argument against a target for reducing emissions is two-fold. One, they have not used their fair share of the carbon budget in the past. Two, they are not using it even now. This can be seen in IEA's data too. Asia (where two of the world's most populous and polluting countries are located) accounts for 59% of the world's population and the Asia Pacific region (this includes less populous Australia and New Zealand) generated 57% of fossil-based electricity in 2022. The Americas produced 19% of such electricity, when they account for only around 10% of world population. Europe, on the other hand, produced such electricity in proportion to its population share.
The climate crisis can affect generation from non-fossil sources
While renewable capacity is expanding, last year showed how late adoption of these sources is already hurting our capacity to transition. Europe suffered one of the worst droughts in at least 500 years and there were similar conditions in the Sichuan region of China. This decreased their hydro power generation. "This has underscored the potential impact of changing climate patterns on power systems as low hydropower generation puts additional strain on the remaining dispatchable conventional fleet and increases the cost of electricity supply. Despite these uncertainties, our current outlook sees global hydropower supply grow in 2023-2025 on planned capacity expansions," the IEA report says.
Renewable capacity also needs investment in grids for their use
This is a point that HT highlighted earlier in relation to India's increasing installed capacity in renewable electricity (https://bit.ly/3DU0Msm) and the IEA report also touches upon this. Why is there a need for investment in grids? Renewable sources of electricity are less stable because the sun and wind are not available 24x7 as coal or gas are. The disruption in hydro power due to drought (as mentioned above) is also an extreme example of this. Therefore, the effective use of these sources requires that a drop in generation in one place can be quickly offset by a surplus in another. This flexibility or even good quality grids is often missing in developing countries. An earlier IEA report for emerging and developing economies showed the investment required in grids for transition. According to it, investment in transmission and distribution will have to more than double by 2026-30 (compared to 2016-20) for a sustainable development scenario (SDS) and quadruple for a net zero scenario. For India, the rate of increase in investments will need to be slightly faster than the group average.
