The Energy Transition is Slowed by Growth in Consumption – CleanTechnica

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Imagine you are a runner in a 400-metre race. You speed around the final bend only to see the officials running away down the track with the finishing tape. You are a strong runner and will catch them, eventually, but not in a fast time. This is the situation of renewable energy, trying to overtake growing energy consumption in order to replace all fossil energy use before planet Earth crosses one or more climate tipping points. Climate science suggests that we are already close to several climate tipping points.

Renewable energy is a strong runner. Its growth rate has far exceeded that of global energy consumption. But it has started from a low base and so its absolute growth, in exajoules per year, has so far been less than that of consumption.

“Houston, we have a problem!”

Specifically, using data from the International Energy Agency, in year 2010, fossil fuels contributed 80% of global total final energy consumption (TFEC). Over the next 12 years, renewable electricity generation grew by 104%, corresponding to 15.8 exajoules (EJ). Nevertheless, in 2022 (and also back in 2000) fossil fuels still contributed about 80% of global TFEC. Over the same period, TFEC had grown by 15%, corresponding to 27 EJ, double the absolute growth of renewable energy.

Most of the growth in TFEC was in transportation and combustion heating taken together, and it was almost entirely fossil fuelled. Eventually, almost all transportation and combustion heating will be replaced by renewable electricity directly as electricity, with the remainder (e.g., long-distance air travel) supplied indirectly by green hydrogen or ammonia. But, over 2010–2022, even global renewable electricity generation (growth 15.8 EJ) did not keep up with total global electricity generation (growth 27 EJ) in absolute terms.

The problem is not the fault of renewable energy, whose growth has exceeded, and continues to exceed, all expectations. Furthermore, the problem cannot be solved by nuclear energy, which takes several times as long to build than wind and solar firmed with battery storage. The problem is the growth in consumption.

Scenarios for the energy transition 

Part of the solution is to reduce energy demand by means of energy efficiency, but will this be enough? To gain some understanding of the challenge for demand reduction, we consider three scenarios for replacing the global contribution to TFEC by renewable electricity by 2050. Each scenario has a lower TFEC in 2050, corresponding to increasingly large reductions in energy consumption. The challenge is simultaneously to electrify all energy consumption (i.e., transportation and combustion heating) while transitioning all electricity to renewables by 2050.

The first two scenarios are from the International Energy Agency (IEA): the Stated Policies Scenario (STEPS) in which TFEC grows to 536 EJ at 2050 and the Net Zero Emissions (NZE) scenario in which TFEC declines from its actual value of 422 EJ in 2022 to 343 EJ in 2050. The IEA describes the latter as a “normative” scenario and includes some modest behavioural changes in it.

I’ve taken the baseline growth rate of renewable energy to be the exceptionally high growth from 2021 to 2022, which was 2.286 EJ/year, 1.74 times its average growth rate from 2010 to 2022. Then, if renewable energy generation grows linearly from 31 EJ in 2022 to the STEPS target for TFEC of 536 EJ in 2050, renewable energy would have to grow at approximately eight times the baseline growth rate to replace all fossil energy by 2050. To achieve the NZE target, it would have to grow at approximately five times the baseline rate. (See Table 1.)

Table 1: Increases in growth rate of renewable energy (RE) needed to substitute for all global fossil energy consumption by 2050 for three demand scenarios, assuming in each either linear or exponential growth in RE

As linear growth of renewable energy does not look likely to reach the STEPS or NZE targets, we next consider exponential growth. In the STEPS case, to replace all fossil fuels by 2050, global renewable energy would have to double every 6.8 years and keep doubling, four times in total. For NZE, the doubling time is 8 years with 3.5 doublings, which is better, but still formidable.

Even if it were possible for the manufacture, installation and commissioning of wind and solar to achieve the above exponential growth rates, demand would be limited by the rates at which transportation and combustion heating could be electrified. There is no point in increasing supply more rapidly than demand. Globally, the electrification of transportation is in an early stage and the electrification of combustion heating has barely begun.

Getting SERIOUS

I’ve created a third consumption scenario, called SERIOUS, in which TFEC decreases to half the 2022 level, i.e. to 221 EJ, by 2050. Then, if renewable energy generation grows linearly over the same period, it will have to grow at three times its baseline rate to replace all fossil energy by 2050. Alternatively, if renewable energy generation grows exponentially, it will have to double every decade, three times in total. If governments get SERIOUS about the energy transition, both the linear and exponential growth cases may be possible.

Improvements in energy efficiency are not limited to technologies such as home insulation, efficient appliances and more efficient industrial processes. Greater reductions in energy consumption will be achieved by efficiency gains from the electrification of transportation and the replacement of low-temperature combustion heating by heat pumps. A leading research group on energy scenarios, based at LUT University in Finland, has estimated that total energy demand following complete electrification could be halved.

Socioeconomic changes as well as technical

Even the IEA recognises in STEPS that energy efficiency improvements may not achieve sufficient reductions in demand. The SERIOUS scenario would almost certainly require socioeconomic changes as well as changes in individual behaviour. These changes may be necessary to ensure that the potential reductions in energy demand are not wiped out by economic growth driving excessive growth in energy consumption. Economic growth is driven by growth in economic consumption per person and population. As the richest 10% of the global population are responsible for half global greenhouse gas emissions, it is the consumption per person and population of the rich that should be of greatest concern.  The political barriers to addressing this social inequity in the climate crisis are substantial.

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By Dr Mark Diesendorf, Honorary Associate Professor in Environment & Society

BIO: Dr Mark Diesendorf has a BSc with first class honours in physics from the University of Sydney and a PhD in applied mathematics from UNSW. He is currently Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Humanities & Languages, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW Sydney. He teaches, researches and consults in the interdisciplinary fields of sustainable energy, energy policy, theory of sustainability, ecological economics, and practical processes by which government, business and other organisations can achieve ecologically sustainable and socially just development.

From 2004 to 2016 he was Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies, UNSW Sydney. His earlier positions include Principal Research Scientist in CSIRO in the 1980s, senior lecturer in Human Ecology at the Australian National University (1994-1996), Professor of Environmental Science and Foundation Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney (1996-2001), Director of the private consultancy Sustainability Centre Pty Ltd (2001-2007) and Education Program Leader of the Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living from 2017 until it closed in June 2019.

Based on his belief that science, technology and economics should serve the community at large, he has been at various times secretary of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science (Canberra), co-founder and vice-president of the Sustainable Energy Industries Council of Australia, co-founder and president of the original Australasian Wind Energy Association, president of the Australia New Zealand Society for Ecological Economics (ANZSEE) and vice-president of Appropriate Technology for Community and Environment (APACE).

He is co-editor of the interdisciplinary book Human Ecology, Human Economy: Ideas for an Ecologically Sustainable Future (1997) and author of Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy (UNSW Press, 2007), Climate Action: A Campaign Manual for Greenhouse Solutions (UNSW Press, 2009), Sustainable Energy Solutions for Climate Change (Routledge & UNSW Press, 2014) and lead author of The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation: Technological, Socioeconomic and Political Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).