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At what cost for an energy future? IEA report puts a price tag of $44 trillion on clean energy but says $115 trillion in fuel savings would result; electricity is key Alan Bailey Petroleum News
In its Energy Technology Perspectives report for 2014, the International Energy Agency, or IEA, says that the world is not on target to meet needed goals of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from energy production and use, and that an additional $44 trillion in investment is needed between now and 2050 to secure a clean energy future. But the energy transformations resulting from this investment could save $115 trillion in fuel costs, as a result of changes in energy sources and improved energy efficiency, IEA says.
IEA is funded by its 29 member countries and has a role of encouraging dialogue, providing data and making recommendations for ensuring reliable, affordable and clean energy supplies. The agency’s perspectives on the world’s energy future relate to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s analysis of future climate change scenarios, based on models which find that human-generated carbon dioxide, if unchecked, will lead to increased global warming.
Changing energy mix IEA favors a target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions to an extent that would potentially limit future average global warming to 2 degrees C. Under this scenario, electricity overtakes oil products, to become the dominant energy carrier, IEA says. The agency sees natural gas as having a transitional role in replacing more carbon-intensive coal as a fuel for power generation, and in providing flexible power generation to balance the highly variable power output from renewable energy sources such as wind farms.
The agency uses an energy sector carbon intensity index to track worldwide carbon dioxide emissions in relation to the amount of total energy supplied. That index showed a decline of 6 percent between 1971 and 1990 before remaining about constant after that. To achieve the IEA’s recommended emissions target, the index must decline 12 percent by 2025 and 64 percent by 2050, with an accompanying slowdown in energy demand, IEA says.
In April the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have been falling in recent years, with a 3.4 percent decrease between 2011 and 2012, for example. EPA attributes the fall to a combination of decreased energy consumption, switching of some coal-fired power generation to the use of natural gas, and improved fuel efficiency in the transportation sector.
Need for CCS The IEA says that a continuing rise in worldwide coal use without the deployment of carbon capture and storage, or CCS, technologies is proving problematic in achieving carbon emissions targets. But high costs and a lack of political and financial commitment hamper the implementation of CCS capabilities, IEA says.
The agency’s report says that hydro, onshore wind and solar power development is keeping pace with targets for the management of carbon dioxide emissions, with the cost competitiveness of these technologies improving. Other renewable energy sources such as offshore wind, advanced bioenergy and ocean energy require financial stimuli. Global nuclear power capacity is stagnating.
And the report says that the deployment of renewable energy is accelerating in Asia and emerging economies, while slowing or proving more volatile in Europe and the United States. Progress on the deployment of renewable energy sources depends on government policy incentives. Overall, global investment in renewable energy has declined in the last couple of years, the report says.
The report comments on an increasing use of electric vehicles. China, for example, is trying to improve the air quality in its cities, with an action plan to require nearly one-third of new vehicles in Beijing over the next four years to use electric, hybrid or fuel-cell technologies. The cost of batteries for vehicles is dropping, the report notes.
Energy efficiency The report stresses the general importance of energy efficiency, saying that industrial plants could over time slash their energy consumption by 11 to 26 percent through the use of best available technologies. However, new and emerging energy saving technologies will require time and investment for commercialization. And a heightened priority for the improved energy performance of buildings is needed, particularly in emerging and developing countries, the report says. The report comments that the United States has introduced new energy-saving building codes.
One area of particular concern for energy efficiency is the rapidly growing array of electrical devices which are continuously plugged into electricity power networks and many of which consume significant power, even when not in active use. One intriguing statistic that the report quotes is the 16,800 gigabytes per second of global internet traffic recorded in 2012, a figure expected to increase to 46,500 gigabytes per second in 2017.
The widespread implementation of technologies to reduce networked device power usage when in standby mode, and to generally improve the energy efficiency of the devices, will require global policy action, the report says. With the number of networked devices in use expected to “skyrocket,” energy demand from the devices may reach 1,140 terawatt hours by 2025, the report says.
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