Clean energy growth keeps narrowing Paris goal open – for now

The path to limiting global warming to 1.5 °C has narrowed, but clean energy growth is keeping it open, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The agency’s landmark Net Zero Roadmap shows that driving down GHG emissions from the world’s energy sector to net zero and limiting global warming to 1.5  ̊C remains “possible due to the record growth of key clean energy technologies”, though momentum still needs to increase rapidly in many areas.

Record growth in solar power capacity and electric car sales is in line with a pathway towards net-zero emissions globally by mid-century, as are industry plans for the roll-out of new manufacturing capacity for them, says the IEA. Those two technologies alone deliver one-third of the emissions reductions between today and 2030 in the pathway.

Clean energy innovation has also been delivering more options and lowering technology costs. In the IEA’s original roadmap in 2021, technologies not yet available on the market delivered nearly 50% of the emissions reductions needed for net zero in 2050. That number has now fallen to around 35% in the 2023 update.

“The path to limiting global warming to 1.5 C has narrowed since 2021, but despite stubbornly high emissions, the staggering growth of clean energy technologies like solar & EVs is keeping it open,” tweeted IEA’s executive director Fatih Birol.

Yet bolder action is necessary this decade. In this year’s updated net zero pathway, global renewable power capacity triples by 2030. Meanwhile, the annual rate of energy efficiency improvements doubles, sales of electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps rise sharply, and energy sector methane emissions fall by 75%.

This huge policy-driven ramping up of clean energy capacity drives down fossil fuel demand by 25% by 2030. By 2050, fossil fuel demand falls by an eye-popping 80%.

As a result, no new unabated coal plants are needed. Neither are new long-lead-time upstream oil and gas projects, new coal mines or mine extensions. Nonetheless, continued investment is required in some existing oil and gas assets and already approved projects to avoid damaging price spikes, said the IEA.

The report warns that a failure to sufficiently step up ambition and implementation between now and 2030 would create additional climate risks and make achieving the 1.5 ̊C goal dependant on the massive deployment of carbon removal technologies, which are expensive and unproven at scale.

A failure to expand clean energy quickly enough by 2030 means nearly 5bn tonnes of CO2 would have to be removed from the atmosphere every year during the second half of this century. “If carbon removal technologies fail to reach this target, returning the temperature to 1.5 ̊C would not be possible,” said the IEA.

It is also essential to foster an equitable global transition that takes different national circumstances into account, the report finds. For example, advanced economies must reach net zero sooner to allow emerging and developing economies more time, in order to stay on track.

Nonetheless, this means that “almost all countries” must accelerate their targeted net zero dates. It also hinges on mobilising a significant increase in investment, especially in emerging and developing economies. In the new zero pathway, global clean energy spending rises from $1.8 trillion in 2023 to $4.5 trillion annually by the early 2030s.