IEA Sees A Ray Of Sunshine In The Gloom Of Planetary Collapse – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

Everyone knows the Earth is warmer, storms are stronger, droughts are longer, and people are dying from excessive heat. Everyone also knows that burning fossil fuels is the primary reason why the Earth is getting hotter. Climate grief is real and growing among those who are paying attention. But the IEA, whose mission is to track who is using what energy and how much of it, said this week the explosion of solar power around the world offers a glimmer of hope that we won’t immolate ourselves by overheating our little blue orb beyond the point where humans can survive. Yay!

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA and a world renowned energy economist, said this week that, while much more needs to be done, the rapid uptake of solar power and electric vehicles were encouraging.

“Despite the scale of the challenges, I feel more optimistic than I felt two years ago. Solar photovoltaic installations and electric vehicle sales are perfectly in line with what we said they should be, to be on track to reach net zero by 2050, and thus stay within 1.5ºC. Clean energy investments in the last two years have seen a staggering 40% increase.”

Birol’s words have been widely reported. The Guardian, Time, AP, ABC News, Sky News, and many more news outlets are trumpeting Birol’s announcement. And that’s a problem. Why? Because while a ray of sunshine is welcome news, there is a strong possibility that this pronouncement by the head of the IEA will give cover to fossil fuel companies and climate change deniers to say, “See? Nothing to worry about. Everything’s fine. Let’s just continue doing what we have always done. Go back to sleep, everyone.”

The IEA Net Zero Roadmap

Birol’s remarks came as the IEA released its latest Net Zero Roadmap report, which encourages nations to bring the net zero plans forward as much as possible. The first Net Zero Roadmap was published in 2021. A lot has changed since then. In the executive summary, the IEA report says,

“The case for transforming the global energy system in line with the 1.5 °C goal has never been stronger. August 2023 was the hottest on record by a large margin, and the hottest month ever after July 2023. The impacts of climate change are increasingly frequent and severe, and scientific warnings about the dangers of the current pathway have become stronger than ever.

“Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the energy sector reached a new record high of 37 billion tonnes (Gt) in 2022, 1% above their pre-pandemic level, but are set to peak this decade. The speed of the roll-out of key clean energy technologies means that the IEA now projects that demand for coal, oil and natural gas will all peak this decade even without any new climate policies. This is encouraging, but not nearly enough for the 1.5 °C goal.”

IEA Calls For Tripling Renewable Energy

The report calls for tripling the amount of renewable energy available in the world by 2030. It also calls for cutting methane emissions by 75%, something that should fairly easy to achieve, since the price of methane gas has increased to the point where it is cheaper for companies to plug their leaks and sell it for additional profits rather than letting it escape unimpeded into the atmosphere.

It is laughable that the vaunted capitalist model encourages companies to waste their most precious resources because there is no economic penalty for polluting the environment, but that is the system we have. Many of the goals the IEA is promoting could be more easily accomplished if such wastefulness was penalized rather than ignored.

Birol went on to say, “The most important challenge [to limiting temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels] is the lack of international cooperation. COP 28 is a critical juncture, and should send a strong signal to energy markets that governments are taking the climate seriously. They should move to reduce the consumption of unabated fossil fuels. To reduce fossil fuel emissions, we need to reduce demand for fossil fuels. This is a golden condition, if we are to reach our climate goals. To reduce fossil fuel emissions, we need to reduce demand for fossil fuels. This is a golden condition, if we are to reach our climate goals.”

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Not Falling

Birol is troubled by the fact that greenhouse gas emissions, which are mostly a result of burning coal, methane gas, and fuels derived from oil, are remaining constant instead of declining. In fact, they reached a new record of 37 gigatons last year. So just how much is that? According to NASA, one gigaton is equal to one billion metric tons, 2.2 trillion pounds, or 10,000 fully loaded U.S. aircraft carriers.

37 gigatons, therefore, is equal to 370,000 aircraft carriers. We can’t continue putting that much junk into the atmosphere and continue to survive as a species. That should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.

“Instead of starting to fall as envisaged in our 2021 report, demand for fossil fuel has increased,” the IEA report says, largely because of Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine and continued growth in investments in fossil fuel extraction and production,

“The actions we need to take now are increasingly massive, and there is no slack left in the plan,” Dave Jones, an energy analyst at climate think tank Ember, told Time. “It is now in the hands of governments to deliver.” He pointed out that the time to start delivering on those goals is at the COP 28 conference in Dubai that will take place in November and December of this year.

COP 28 In Dubai

The fact that COP 28 is happening in Dubai and will be led by Sultan Al Jaber, who is head of the UAE oil industry, has many people concerned. In an interview with The Guardian earlier this year, he was candid about the conference and his role.

“Phasing down fossil fuels is inevitable and it is essential — it’s going to happen. What I’m trying to say is you can’t unplug the world from the current energy system before you build the new energy system. It’s a transition — transitions don’t happen overnight, transition takes time.

“When we signed up to the hosting of COP 28, we knew exactly what we were signing up to. I don’t think there has ever been a country that has hosted the COP that did not get this type of pressure or heat from activists and media, so that’s part of the game. The scrutiny sometimes also makes us dig deeper into issues, understand better, analyse more to draw better conclusions. Never have I said that I have all the solutions, or I have all the answers.”

That seems fairly reasonable and rational, but detractors are concerned over semantics. Al Jaber talks of phasing down fossil fuels. They want to talk about phasing out fossil fuels. It’s a small but important distinction. It would be a tragedy if the fate of humanity depends on such linguistic niceties.