The global energy sector much reach net-zero emissions no later than 2060 if the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious goal of limiting worldwide temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is to be realized, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday in its World Energy Outlook 2016.
The new report evaluates the outlooks for the coal, natural gas, and oil markets through 2040, along with the future of energy efficiency and energy and climate change.
Nearly 200 nations adopted the Paris Agreement on climate change in December 2015, and as of Wednesday the accord had 110 member countries. Each has offered commitments aimed at curbing rising temperatures, including through reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Meeting even the main goal of keeping the temperature spike “well below” 2 degrees Celsius would be “very tough,” the IEA report says. It calls the more ambitious 1.5-degree target “uncharted territory.”
The report reaffirms what member states to the Paris Agreement have already acknowledged: that the current national commitments are not sufficient to meet even the 2-degree goal. The accord itself establishes a process under which the participating governments will gather every five years to increase the ambition of their pledges with an eye toward hitting that target.
The global energy sector emits roughly two-thirds of worldwide greenhouse gases, making it central to the success of the Paris Agreement, according to the IEA. Progress continues in this sphere: there was no growth last year in carbon dioxide emissions linked to the energy sector, largely thanks to a 1.8 percent boost in the worldwide economy’s energy intensity, the report says. Renewable sources of energy are also leading the way in the increased employment of cleaner energy sources. Meanwhile, investment in upstream oil and gas sources is down drastically, with the value of fossil-fuel consumption subsidies down from close to $500 billion in 2014 to $325 billion in 2015.
Two key steps are required to meet the 2-degree target, according to Laura Cozzi, IEA deputy head for global energy economics: energy-related C02 emissions must peak in next few years, and the energy sector must become carbon neutral by end of century.
“So far the 2-degree target is not out of reach. It will require a significant acceleration of certain policies, notably pushing harder and faster on renewables,” Cozzi said in a call Monday with reporters.
Renewables would need to reach roughly 60 percent of global electricity generation by 2040, compared to the 40 percent that is anticipated, Cozzi said.
Even having a reasonable likelihood to stay within the 1.5-degree cap would require another step in ambition altogether, the International Energy Agency said. The energy sector would have to reach net-zero emissions somewhere from 2040 to 2060, the report says, “thus requiring radical near-term reductions in energy sector CO2 emissions, employing every known technological, societal and regulatory decarbonisation option.”
Cozzi said the IEA would have no comment on how the results of the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election might impact the global climate change effort. The Republican president-elect, Donald Trump, has notably called climate change a hoax and has indicated his intention to withdraw the United States – the world’s No. 2 emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China – from the Paris Agreement. While the accord’s entry into force means the United States and all other nations that had joined by that point cannot withdraw for four years, there is no binding requirement that the new administration carry out its predecessor’s pledge to by 2025 reduce national emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels.
