IEA: Surge In Renewables And EVs Has Limited Global Emissions

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https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-...les-And-EVs-Has-Limited-Global-Emissions.html


The growth in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion is expected to be far smaller in 2022 than the year before.

According to the IEA, a surge in renewable energy and electric vehicles has helped to cap emissions.

The IEA believes that CO2 emissions this year would be more than three times greater if that surge in renewables and EVs hadn’t taken place.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels globally are expected to rise by just under 1% in 2022, a much smaller increase compared to last year’s thanks to record deployment of renewable energy sources and electric vehicles, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a new analysis on Wednesday.

Last year, CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels jumped as the global economy began to recover rapidly from the economic crisis triggered by Covid, the IEA said.

This year, the rise in those emissions will be much smaller, defying expectations of a major jump because of the increased use of coal for power generation amid soaring natural gas prices, the international agency said.

According to the IEA’s analysts of the latest data, CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are on track to increase by nearly 300 million tons in 2022 to 33.8 billion tons. The rise of 300 million tons would be “a far smaller rise than their jump” of nearly 2 billion tons in 2021.

“Global CO2 emissions would be set for a 3-times-bigger rise in 2022 – of nearly 1 gigatonne – were it not for a major expansion of solar, wind & EVs,” the IEA’s Executive Director Fatih Birol said.

“This is contributing to an improvement in the CO2 intensity of global energy supply, resuming a key trend,” Birol added.

“The global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a scramble by many countries to use other energy sources to replace the natural gas supplies that Russia has withheld from the market. The encouraging news is that solar and wind are filling much of the gap, with the uptick in coal appearing to be relatively small and temporary,” Birol said in a statement. . . .



Same story, Reuters:
. . . The rise this year has been driven by power generation and the aviation sector as air travel rebounds from pandemic lows.

While that increase could have been much larger at possibly 1 billion tonnes with countries' coal demand surging as gas prices soared due to the war in Ukraine, deployment of renewable energy and EVs have kept a lid on the rise in emissions. . . .

"The encouraging news is that solar and wind are filling much of the gap, with the uptick in coal appearing to be relatively small and temporary,” he added.

The report said solar photovoltaic and wind were leading an increase in global renewable electricity generation of more than 700 terawatt-hours (TWh), the largest annual rise on record., this year. Without this increase, global CO2 emissions would have been more than 600 million tonnes higher this year.

CO2 emissions are on course to increase by nearly 300 million tonnes to 33.8 billion tonnes this year, a far smaller rise than their jump of nearly 2 billion tonnes in 2021, the agency said in a report.

“The global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a scramble by many countries to use other energy sources to replace the natural gas supplies that Russia has withheld from the market," said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. . . .

Despite droughts in several regions, global hydropower output is up year-on-year, contributing over one-fifth of the expected growth in renewable power.

The European Union’s CO2 emissions are on course to decline this year despite higher coal emissions. The rise in European coal use is expected to be temporary, as a strong pipeline of new renewable projects is forecast to add around 50 gigawatts of capacity next year.

In China, CO2 emissions are set to remain flat in 2022 due to weaker economic growth, the impact of drought on hydropower, and deployments of solar and wind.

https://www.reuters.com/business/en...grow-by-less-than-1-this-year-iea-2022-10-19/


From the IEA new release itself:
. . . As well as the challenges for hydropower in some regions, the world’s low-emissions electricity supply has suffered a setback from a series of nuclear power plant outages, which are set to reduce global nuclear power production by over 80 TWh. This has largely been due to more than half of France’s fleet of nuclear reactors being offline for part of the year. The drop in nuclear power generation globally has contributed to an increased use of coal and oil for electricity generation. The world’s use of natural gas is expected to decline following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, resulting in a decrease in CO2 emissions of around 40 million tonnes in 2022.

Demand for oil is set to grow more than for any other fossil fuel in 2022, with oil-related CO2 emissions up by around 180 million tonnes. This has been driven largely by the transport sector as travel restrictions have been lifted and pre-pandemic commuting and travel patterns have resumed. Aviation is expected to contribute around three-quarters of the rise in emissions from oil use, notably due to increases in international air travel. However, the aviation sector’s emissions are still only around 80% of their pre-pandemic levels.

Uncertainty in global natural gas markets will continue to shape many key energy trends for the rest of this year and in 2023. However, promising signs of lasting structural changes to the CO2 intensity of global energy are evident in 2022 – and they are set to be reinforced by major increases in government support for clean energy investment, notably in the US Inflation Reduction Act, as well as in decarbonisation plans such as the European Union’s Fit for 55 package and Japan’s Green Transformation (GX) plan, and in ambitious clean energy targets in China and India.

The effects of recent policies on energy security and global emissions trends will be explored in depth by the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2022, which will be released on 27 October.

https://www.iea.org/news/defying-ex...y-only-a-fraction-of-last-year-s-big-increase
 
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