A new rooftop wind harvesting device is capable of generating 50 per cent more electricity than solar panels for the same cost, according to its inventors.
A much smaller footprint means a single unit can also provide the same amount of power as up to 16 solar panels.
The motionless design, created by Texas-based startup Aeromine Technologies, replaces the blades found in traditional wind turbines with an aerodynamic system that harvests energy from the airflow above a building.
This makes them virtually noiseless and safe for birds and other wildlife.
“This is a game-changer adding new value to the fast-growing rooftop power generation market, helping corporations meet their resilience and sustainability goals with an untapped distributed renewable energy source,” said Aeromine CEO David Asarnow.
“Aeromine’s proprietary technology brings the performance of wind energy to the onsite generation market, mitigating legacy constraints posed by spinning wind turbines and less efficient solar panels.”
Aeromine’s units require 10 per cent of the space needed for solar panels, while also being capable of producing electricity 24 hours a day throughout the year.
The firm said the technology will reduce a building’s need for energy storage capacity and could potentially even make the building energy independent, depending on the building’s design and location.
“The technology is a major leap forward from legacy distributed wind turbines that are ill-suited for most rooftop applications,” the site states.
“Aeromine’s founders have created a much more effective way to harness even moderate wind to create energy for large, flat rooftop buildings such as warehouses, data centers, office, and apartment buildings.”
The device is currently being tested at a manufacturing facility in Michigan, while future applications could include large residential buildings and electric car charging stations.
Wind and solar generated 10% of global electricity for the first time in 2021, a new analysis shows.
Fifty countries get more than a tenth of their power from wind and solar sources, according to research from Ember, a climate and energy think tank.
As the world’s economies rebounded from the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, demand for energy soared.
Demand for electricity grew at a record pace. This saw a surge in coal power, rising at the fastest rate since 1985.
The research shows the growth in the need for electricity last year was the equivalent of adding a new India to the world’s grid.
Wind turbine blades being made ready for export from China
Solar and wind and other clean sources generated 38% of the world’s electricity in 2021. For the first time wind turbines and solar panels generated 10% of the total.
The share coming from wind and sun has doubled since 2015, when the Paris climate agreement was signed.
The fastest switching to wind and solar took place in the Netherlands, Australia, and Vietnam. All three have moved a tenth of their electricity demand from fossil fuels to green sources in the last two years.
“The Netherlands is a great example of a more northern latitude country proving that it’s not just where the Sun shines, it’s also about having the right policy environment that makes the big difference in whether solar takes off,” said Hannah Broadbent from Ember.
Vietnam also saw spectacular growth, particularly in solar which rose by over 300% in just one year.
“In the case of Vietnam, there was a massive step up in solar generation and it was driven by feed-in tariffs – money the government pays you for generating electricity – which made it very attractive for households and for utilities to be deploying large amounts of solar,” said Dave Jones, Ember’s global lead.
“What we saw with that was a massive step up in solar generation last year, which didn’t just meet increased electricity demand, but it also led to a fall in both coal and gas generation.”
Despite the growth and the fact that some countries like Denmark now get more than 50% of their electricity from wind and solar, coal power also saw a remarkable rise in 2021.
Coal saw a resurgence in 2021 as the price of other energy sources rose rapidly
A large majority of the increased demand for electricity in 2021 was met by fossil fuels with coal fired electricity rising by 9%, the fastest rate since 1985.
Much of the rise in coal use was in Asian countries including China and India – but the increase in coal was not matched by gas use which increased globally by only 1%, indicating that rising prices for gas have made coal a more viable source of electricity.
“The last year has seen some really super high gas prices, where coal became cheaper than gas,” said Dave Jones.
“What we’re seeing right now is gas prices across Europe and across much of Asia being 10 times more expensive than they were this time last year, where coal is three times more expensive.
He called the price rises for both gas and coal: “a double reason for electricity systems to demand more clean electricity, because the economics have shifted so fundamentally.”
The researchers say that despite the coal resurgence in 2021, major economies including the US, UK, Germany, and Canada are aiming to shift their grids to 100% carbon free electricity within the next 15 years.
This switch is being driven by concerns over keeping the rise in the world’s temperature under 1.5C this century.
To do that, scientists say that wind and solar need to grow at around 20% every year up to 2030.
The authors of this latest analysis say this is now “eminently possible”.
The war in Ukraine could also give a push to electricity sources that don’t depend on Russian imports of oil and gas.
“Wind and solar have arrived, and they offer a solution out of the multiple crises that the world is facing, whether it’s a climate crisis, or the dependence on fossil fuels, this could be a real turning point,” said Hannah Broadbent.
Ember’s Global Electricity Review can be found here.
Stanford professor Mark Jacobson sees a way for the U.S. to meet its energy demands by 2050 with 100% wind, water and solar.
His models use no fossil fuels, carbon capture, direct air capture, bioenergy, blue hydrogen or nuclear power.
Jacobson’s roadmap is different from many clean-energy proposals, which advocate using all technologies possible.
A prominent Stanford University professor has outlined a roadmap for the United States to meet its total energy needs using 100% wind, water and solar by 2050.
Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering and the director of its Atmosphere/Energy Program, has been promoting the idea of all renewable energy as the best way forward for more than a decade. His latest calculations toward this ambitious goal were recently published in the scientific journal Renewable Energy.
Transitioning to a clean-energy grid should happen by 2035, the study advises, with at least 80% of that adjustment completed by 2030. For the purposes of Jacobson’s study, his team factored in presumed population growth and efficiency improvements in energy to envision what that would look like in 2050.
Jacobson first published a roadmap of renewable energy for all 50 states in 2015.
This recent update of that 2015 work has a couple of notable improvements.
First, Jacobson and his colleagues had access to more granular data for how much heat will be needed in buildings in every state for the coming two years in 30-second increments. “Before we didn’t have that type of data available,” Jacobson told CNBC.
Also, the updated data makes use of battery storage while the first set of calculations he did relied on adding turbines to hydropower plants to meet peak demand, an assumption that turned out to be impractical and without political support for that technology, Jacobson said.
Reliability of four-hour batteries
In the analysis, Jacobson and his team used battery-storage technology to compensate for the inherent intermittency of solar and wind power generation — those times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
The Achilles’ heel of a completely renewable grid, many argue, is that it is not stable enough to be reliable. Blackouts have become a particular concern, notably in Texas this year and during the summer of 2020 in California.
That’s where four-hour batteries come in as a way to generate grid stability. “I discovered this all just because I have batteries in my own home,” Jacobson told CNBC. “And I figured, oh, my God, this is so basic. So obvious. I can’t believe nobody has figured this out.”
Mark Jacobson’s garage where his four batteries are located. Two cars are currently charging, too. Photo courtesy Mark Jacobson
Jacobson said that he observed his batteries stayed charged if they weren’t plugged in when they are off.
To get more than four hours of charge, multiple four-hour batteries can be stacked to discharge sequentially. If a battery needs more charge output at one time than the battery can provide, then the batteries need to be used simultaneously, Jacobson told CNBC.
With this observation, Jacobson and his colleagues at Stanford produced scenarios showing it is possible to transition to a fully renewable system without any blackouts or batteries with ultra-long-duration battery technology.
That’s key because technology for ultra-long-duration batteries that would hold energy for several days have yet to be commercialized. Start-ups like Form Energy are working to bring such batteries to market.
Planning, of course, is also key to keeping the grid stable. “Wind is variable, solar is variable,” Jacobson said. “But it turns out, first of all, when you interconnect wind and solar over large areas, which is currently done, you smooth out the supply quite a bit. So it’s because, you know, when the wind is not blowing in one place, it’s usually blowing somewhere else. So over a large region, you have a smoother supply of energy.”
Similarly, wind and solar power are complimentary. And hydropower “is perfect backup, because you can turn it on and off instantaneously,” he said.
Also, there needs to be changes in pricing structures to motivate customers to do high energy demand activities at off-peak times.
“Demand response is a very big component of keeping the grid stable,” Jacobson said. “It’s used some today. But a lot of places a lot of states in the US right now, the electricity price is constant all day … and that’s a problem.”
Calculating the breakdowns
So far, Jacobson and his team have run simulations for the all renewable, four-hour battery roadmaps for six individual states – Alaska, Hawaii, California, Texas, New York and Florida, and the contiguous 48 states taken together. (For the rest of the states, Jacobson has approximate simulations, which are available here.)
According to his models, California’s energy mix would include 14.72% on-shore wind energy, 18.28% off-shore wind, 21.86% solar panels on roofs, 34.66% solar panels operated by a utility, 5.32% hydropower, 2.91% geothermal electricity and 0.25% wave energy.
Texas would be 37.66 on-shore wind, 14.77% off-shore wind, 20.87% roof solar, 23.85% solar panels operated by a utility, 0.1% hydropower and 0.19% wave energy.
Jacobson and his colleagues use three types of models for the calculations.
First, they use a spreadsheet model to project business-as-usual energy demand in each sector in each state to 2050 and then to convert the business-as-usual energy demand in 2050 to electricity provided by wind, water and solar.
Second, they use a weather model to predict the wind and solar fields in each state every 30 seconds. This weather-prediction model runs on a supercomputer and is written in Fortran computing language.
And the third component of his modeling matches the 2050 energy demand with the weather modeling of energy that can be supplied from wind, water and solar every 30 seconds. The third component is also written in Fortran, but this portion of the process can run on virtually any computer.
The resulting models use no fossil fuels, carbon capture, direct air capture, bioenergy, blue hydrogen or nuclear power.
And in that, Jacobson’s roadmaps are different from many clean-energy proposals, which advocate for using all technologies possible.
“So we’re trying to eliminate air pollution and global warming, and provide energy security. So those are the three purposes of our studies,” Jacobson told CNBC. And that “is a little different than a lot of studies that only focus on greenhouse gases. So we’re trying to eliminate air pollution as well, and also provides energy security.”
Addressing all three issues has been Jacobson’s focus for more than a decade. His first major work in the area was published in 2009 in Scientific American magazine, and four years later he appeared on NBC’s “Late Night with David Letterman” to promote his renewable-only approach. Jacobson and longtime progressive political candidate Bernie Sanders co-authored a clean-energy op-ed in The Guardian in 2017.
Combating fears of blackouts
Jacobson knows that his viewpoint is not the loudest. The promise of next-generation nuclear power plants, for example, has gotten government and private funding of late.
Nuclear innovation is “pushed mostly by the industry people, people like Bill Gates, who has a huge investment in small modular reactors,” Jacobson said. “He has a financial interest. And he wants to be known as somebody who tries to help solve the problem.”
Gates addressed the criticism that he’s a “technocrat” looking to solve climate change with new innovations, instead of with political legislation supporting technology like wind and solar which already exists, in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CBS’ “60 Minutes” earlier in the year. “I wish all this funding of these companies wasn’t necessary at all. Without innovation, we will not solve climate change. We won’t even come close,” Gates said.
Also, the timeline for getting some of these technologies to commercialization is too long to be useful. Gates’ advanced reactor company, TerraPower, announced in November that it has chosen the frontier-era coal town Kemmerer, Wyoming, as the preferred location for its first demonstration reactor, which it aims to build by 2028.
“Even if it’s seven years, that’s just a demonstration plant,” Jacobson said. “That’s not even close to a commercial plant and on the scale we need.”
TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque said the technology, specifically the Natrium nuclear reactor, will make a meaningful difference in combating climate change.
“The Natrium technology was chosen as the first mover of TerraPower’s technologies because we believe it will be operational in time to offer significant benefit toward the country’s decarbonization goals,” Levesque said in a statement.
Winning over clean-energy skeptics afraid of blackouts is a challenge, but Jacobson believes he can convince people to accept that a future like he has modeled is possible.
Renewable solutions for long-distance ships and aircraft are not available yet, he said. “But those are on the drawing board. And we know technically it can be done just as those haven’t been commercialized.”
Education is a key hurdle, as Jacobson sees it. “I am optimistic. But the thing I find that’s the biggest difficulty is the fact that it is an information issue, because most people are not aware, most people are not aware of what’s possible,” he said.
It has been another record year for renewable energy, despite the Covid-19 pandemic and rising costs for raw materials around the world, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
About 290GW of new renewable energy generation capacity, mostly in the form of wind turbines and solar panels, has been installed around the world this year, beating the previous record last year. On current trends, renewable energy generating capacity will exceed that of fossil fuels and nuclear energy combined by 2026.
New climate and energy policies in many countries around the world have driven the growth, with many governments setting out higher ambitions on cutting greenhouse gas emissions before and at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last month.
However, this level of growth is still only about half that required to meet net zero carbon emissions by mid-century.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said: “This year’s record renewable energy additions are yet another sign that a new global energy economy is emerging. The high commodity and energy prices we are seeing today pose new challenges for the renewable industry, but elevated fossil fuel prices also make renewables even more competitive.”
According to the IEA report, published on Wednesday, renewables will account for about 95% of the increase in global power-generation capacity from now to the end of 2026, with solar power alone providing about half of the increase.
Raw material prices have risen as the world has emerged from the Covid pandemic and on the back of the energy price rises around the world. These price increases have cancelled out some of the cost falls of recent years in the renewable sector. If they continue next year the cost of wind power will return to levels last seen in 2015, and two to three years of cost falls in solar power will be wiped out.
Heymi Bahar, lead author of the report, said that commodity prices were not the main obstacles to growth, however. Wind and solar would still be cheaper than fossil fuels in most areas, he noted. Permitting was the main barrier to new wind energy projects around the world, and policy measures were needed to expand use of solar power for consumers and industry.
“We need a gear change to meet net zero,” he said. “We have already seen a very important gear change in recent years but we need to move up another gear now. It is possible, we have the tools. Governments need to show more ambition, not just on targets but on policy measures and plans.”
China installed the most new renewable energy capacity this year, and is now expected to reach 1,200GW of wind and solar capacity in 2026, four years earlier than its target of 2030. China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter, but the government was reluctant at Cop26 to commit to the strengthening of its emissions-cutting targets, which many observers had hoped for.
China is targeting a peak in emissions by 2030, which many analysts say is much too late if the world is to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the Paris agreement target that was the focus of the Cop26 talks.
Birol said China’s rapid expansion of renewable energy suggested the country could reach an emissions peak “well before 2030”.
India, the world’s third-biggest emitter, also experienced strong growth in renewable energy capacity in the past year, but its target – set out at Cop26 – of reaching net zero by 2070 is also regarded as too weak by many. Birol said: “The growth of renewables in India is outstanding, supporting the government’s newly announced goal of reaching 500GW of renewable power capacity by 2030 and highlighting India’s broader potential to accelerate its clean energy transition.”
Morocco has positioned itself as a global leader in the fight against climate change, with one of the highest-rated national action plans. But though the north African country intends to generate half its electricity from renewables by 2030, its plans show that much of this energy will come from wind and solar farms in occupied land in neighbouring Western Sahara. Indeed, in my research I have looked at how Morocco has exploited renewable energy developments to entrench the occupation.
Western Sahara, a sparsely-populated desert territory bordering the Atlantic Ocean, is Africa’s last colony. In 1975, its coloniser Spain sold it to Morocco and Mauritania in exchange for continued access to Western Sahara’s rich fisheries and a share of the profits from a lucrative phosphates mine.
According to Morocco, Western Sahara formed part of the Moroccan sultanate before Spanish colonisation in the 1880s. However, that year the International Court of Justice disagreed, and urged a self-determination referendum on independence for the indigenous Saharawis. Nevertheless, Morocco invaded and used napalm against fleeing Saharawi refugees.
Western Sahara is about the size of the UK with 1% the population. All the territory east of the red line is controlled by the Polisario, everything west of the line is controlled by Morocco. The government-in-exile is in Tindouf, southwest Algeria. kmusser / wiki, CC BY-SA
Tens of thousands of Saharawis fled to neighbouring Algeria, where the Saharawi liberation front, the Polisario, established a state-in-exile, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Other Saharawis remained under Moroccan occupation.
Today a sandy wall, or berm, runs the length of the country and everything to the east of the berm remains under the control of the Polisario. Numerous landmines deter a large-scale return of refugees, though some Saharawi nomads do live there.
Morocco and Polisario were at war until 1991, when the UN brokered a ceasefire on the promise of a referendum on independence for Saharawis. This referendum has been continuously blocked by Morocco, which considers Western Sahara part of its “southern provinces”.
Since the 1940s the UN and its special committee on decolonisation has maintained a list of non-self governing territories. As territories gained independence, they have gradually been ticked off the list, and those that remain are almost all small Pacific or Caribbean island nations.
In each case, an “administering power” (usually the UK) is officially noted. Western Sahara is the only African territory remaining on the list. It’s also the only territory where the administering power column is left blank – a footnote explains the UN considers it a “question of decolonisation which remained to be completed by the people of Western Sahara”. Morocco however doesn’t see itself as the occupying power or even as the administering power but says that Western Sahara is simply part of its country.
In November 2020, armed war resumed between the two parties. In a recent journal article, my colleagues Mahmoud Lemaadel, Hamza Lakhal and I argue that the exploitation of natural resources, including renewable energy, played no small role in provoking this renewed war.
Renewable energy from occupied land
Western Sahara is very sunny and surprisingly windy – a natural renewable energy powerhouse. Morocco has exploited these resources by building three large wind farms (five more are planned) and two solar farms (another is planned).
Map of wind power resource across Africa. Red and purple = more wind. The purple area in the north-west covers Western Sahara and Mauritania. Global Wind Atlas / DTU, CC BY-SA
But these developments have made Morocco partly dependent on Western Sahara for its energy supply. Morocco already gets 18% of its installed wind capacity and 15% of its solar from the occupied territory, and by 2030 that could increase to almost half of its wind and up to a third of its solar. That’s according to a new report Greenwashing the Occupation by Western Sahara Resource Watch, a Brussels-based organisation I am affiliated with.
In its nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the Paris climate agreement, Morocco reports on developments in occupied Western Sahara – which it calls its provinces sud (southern provinces) – as if they were in Morocco. This energy dependence entrenches the occupation and undermines the UN peace process.
According to Saharawi researchers, several Saharawi families have been forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for some of these solar farms. My colleagues have also documented forced eviction associated with the development of the wider energy system in Western Sahara.
Wind farm under construction near Laayoune, the largest city in Western Sahara. jbdodane / flickr, CC BY-NC-SA
Saharawi refugees have used solar panels for domestic energy since the late 1980s. The SADR-in-exile would now like to roll out small-scale wind and solar installations in the part of Western Sahara that it controls, in order to power the communal wells, pharmacies and other services there that are used by nomads.
I was recently part of a team that assisted the SADR in developing an indicative nationally determined contribution (iNDC) – essentially an unofficial version of the climate action plans each country was required to submit ahead of the recent UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
The Saharawi Republic launched their iNDC at the COP26 People’s Summit, 8 November 2021. Joanna Allan
SADR hopes this may help to attract climate finance. The iNDC can also be interpreted as a challenge to climate injustice. While having negligible responsibility for the climate emergency, the Saharawis nevertheless face some of its worst impacts: ongoing sand storms, flash flooding, and summer temperatures of over 50°C.
The formal NDC process excludes occupied and displaced populations such as Saharawis from global conversations on how to tackle the climate emergency. The iNDC is an assertive step to demand that Saharawis are heard.
The climate emergency is the biggest threat to civilisation we have ever faced. But there is good news: we already have every tool we need to beat it. The challenge is not identifying the solutions, but rolling them out with great speed.
Some key sectors are already racing ahead, such as electric cars. They are already cheaper to own and run in many places – and when the purchase prices equal those of fossil-fueled vehicles in the next few years, a runaway tipping point will be reached.
Electricity from renewables is now the cheapest form of power in most places, sometimes even cheaper than continuing to run existing coal plants. There’s a long way to go to meet the world’s huge energy demand, but the plummeting costs of batteries and other storage technologies bodes well.
And many big companies are realising that a failure to invest will be far more expensive as the impacts of global heating destroy economies. Even some of the biggest polluters, such as cement and steel, have seen the green writing on the wall.
Buildings are big emitters but the solution – improved energy efficiency – is simple to achieve and saves the occupants money, particularly with the cost of installing technology such as heat pumps expected to fall.
Stopping the razing of forests requires no technology at all, but it does require government action. While progress is poor – and Bolsonaro’s Brazil is going backwards – countries such as Indonesia have shown regulatory action can be effective. Protecting and restoring forests, particularly by empowering indigenous people, is a potent tool.
Recognition of the role food and farming play in driving global heating is high, and the solutions, from alternatives to meat to regenerative farming, are starting to grow. As with fossil fuels, ending vast and harmful subsidies is key, and there are glimmers of hope here, too.
In the climate crisis, every fraction of a degree matters and so every action reduces people’s suffering. Every action makes the world a cleaner and better place to live – by, for example, cutting the air pollution that ends millions of lives a year.
The real fuel for the green transition is a combination of those most valuable and intangible of commodities: political will and skill. The supply is being increased by demands for action from youth strikers to chief executives, and must be used to face down powerful vested interests, such as the fossil fuel, aviation and cattle industries. The race for a sustainable, low-carbon future is on, and the upcoming Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow will show how much faster we need to go.
Transport
Responsible for 14-28% of global greenhouse gas emissions, transport has been slow to decarbonise, and faces particular challenges in areas such as long-haul flight.
But technical solutions are available, if the will, public policy and spending are there, too. Electric cars are the most obvious: petrol and diesel vehicles will barely be produced in Europe within the decade. EV sales are accelerating everywhere, with the likes of Norway well past the tipping point, and cheaper electric vehicles coming from China have cut the fumes from buses. Meanwhile, combustion engines are ever more efficient and less polluting.
Employees on the assembly line for electric buses in Xi an, Shaanxi province, China. Photograph: Visual China Group/Getty Images
Bike and scooter schemes are growing rapidly as cities around the world embrace electric micromobility. Far cleaner ships for global freight are coming. The potential of hydrogen is growing, for cleaner trains where electrification is impractical, to be followed by ships and even, one day, planes. Manufacturers expect short-haul electric aircraft much sooner. Most of all, the pandemic has shown that a world without hypermobility is possible – and that many people will accept, or even embrace, a life where they commute and travel less. Gwyn Topham
Deforestation
Deforestation and land use change are the second-largest source of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The destruction of the world’s forests has continued at a relentless pace during the pandemic, with millions of hectares lost, driven by land-clearing in the Brazilian Amazon.
Volunteers plant mangrove tree seedlings in a conservation area on Dupa beach, Indonesia. Photograph: Basri Marzuki/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
But there are reasons for hope. The UK has put nature at the heart of its Cop26 presidency and behind the scenes, the government is pushing hard for finance and new commitments from forested nations to protect the world’s remaining carbon banks. Indonesia and Malaysia, once global hotspots of deforestation, have experienced significant falls in recent years, the result of increased restrictions on palm oil plantations. However, the 2000s soy moratorium in Brazil shows these trends are reversible. Finally, there is a growing recognition of the importance of indigenous communities to protecting the world’s forests and biodiversity. In the face of racism and targeted violence, a growing number of studies and reports show they are the best guardians of the forest. Empowering those communities will be vital to ending deforestation. Patrick Greenfield
Technology
Emissions from technology companies, including direct emissions, emissions from electricity use and other operations such as manufacturing, account for 0.3% of global carbon emissions, while emissions from cryptocurrencies is a huge emerging issue.
Mining – the process in which a bitcoin is awarded to a computer that solves a complex series of algorithms – is a deeply energy-intensive process and only gets more energy-intensive as the algorithms grow more complex. But new mining methods are lighter, environmentally. A system called “proof of stake” has a 99% lower carbon footprint.
Researchers pose for a group photo at the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals in Beijing, China. The centre was inaugurated to support the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
Scrutiny of the whole sector is increasing, spearheaded by tech workers who walked out in their hundreds to join climate change marches in 2019. The companies have pledged to do better: Amazon aims to be net zero carbon by 2040 and powered with 100% renewable energy by 2025. Facebook has a target of net zero emissions for its entire supply chain by 2030 and Microsoft has pledged to become carbon negative by 2030. Apple has committed to become carbon-neutral across its whole supply chain by 2030.
They’re still falling short when it comes to delivering, but employee groups continue to push. Kari Paul
Business
For decades Exxon Mobil has arguably been corporate America’s biggest climate change denier. But this year, the activist investor Engine No 1 won three seats on the company’s board with an agenda to force the company to finally acknowledge and confront the climate crisis.
Across corporate America and all around the world there are signs of change. The Federal Reserve, the world’s most powerful central bank, is beefing up its climate team. BlackRock, the world’s biggest investor, has made environmental sustainability a core goal for the company.
This isn’t about ideology: it’s about “common sense.” According to BlackRock, failure to tackle climate change is simply bad for business. The investor calculates that 58% of the US will suffer economic decline by 2060-2080 if nothing is done.
Much more needs to be done, and some question whether corporate America can really solve this crisis without government action. But the days of denial are over – what matters now is action. Dom Rushe
Electricity
The rocketing global market price for gas has ripped through world economies, forcing factories to close, triggering blackouts in China, and threatening to cool the global economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
But it has also spelled out a clear economic case for governments to redouble their efforts in developing homegrown, low-carbon electricity systems.
The good news is that renewable energy is ready to step up and play a greater role in electricity systems across the globe.
A woman completes paperwork by the light of solar-powered lamps in a village shop for solar products. Photograph: Kunal Gupta/Climate Visuals Countdown
The precipitous fall in the price of wind and solar energy has helped to incentivise fresh investments in electricity vehicles and energy storage technologies, such as batteries, where costs are plummeting too. Soon, wind and solar power will help to produce green hydrogen, which can be stored over long periods of time to generate electricity during days that are a little less bright or breezy.
All of these advances are made possible by cheap renewables, and will help countries to use more renewable energy too. There has never been a better time to step back from gas and go green. Jillian Ambrose
Buildings
The built environment is one of our biggest polluters, responsible for about 40% of global carbon emissions.
Over the past two decades, the carbon footprint of buildings “in use” has been greatly reduced by energy-saving technologies – better insulation, triple-glazing, and on-site renewables such as solar panels and ground-source heat pumps. Onheat pumps, the UK lags far behind: Norway, through a mixture of grants and high electricity prices, has installed more than 600 heat pumps for every 1,000 households.
As national energy grids are decarbonising, the focus is shifting to reducing the “embodied energy” of materials – which can account for up to three-quarters of a building’s emissions over its lifespan – for example by reducing the amount of concrete and steel in favour of timber.
The Vertical Forest in the Porta Nuova district in Milan. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty
There is also a growing movement to prioritise refurbishment and reuse over demolition, driven by the realisation that the most sustainable buildings are the ones that already exist. Oliver Wainwright
Food and farming
The hoofprint of the global livestock industry is a significant one, accounting for about 14% of total annual greenhouse gas emissions. But it is increasingly recognised and accepted by national governments.
New Zealand now has a legal commitment to reduce methane emissions from agriculture by 10% by 2030, while Denmark has passed a legally binding target to reduce climate emissions from the agricultural sector by 55% by 2030.
While global meat production is increasing, there is a growing shift towards fish and poultry, which have a comparatively lower emissions footprint than red meats. The food industry is also developing a range of lower-carbon products using plant-based proteins such as soy and pea, and insect and lab-grown meat alternatives. Tom Levitt
Manufacturing
Decarbonising the manufacturing of every product needed by a modern economy is a vast and varied task. Some sectors are well on their way. For instance, Apple, the world’s third-largest maker of mobile phones by volume, has pledged to produce net zero carbon throughout its supply chain by 2030.
For many others, advances in efficiency of factories and their products will be accelerated by machine learning and other artificial intelligence technologies that are still in their infancy. There are even hopeful signs in some of the hardest sectors to decarbonise, such as plans by Volvo to replace coal with hydrogen in the steel it uses in cars.
One of the greatest reasons for optimism is manufacturers’ increasing awareness of circular design principles. Making products easier to recycle from the start will help to cut emissions from fresh resource extraction– although a bigger question remains as to whether rich societies can reduce consumption, the most obvious way to cut emissions. Jasper Jolly
Renewable energy developers will compete for a share in a £265m subsidy pot as the government aims to support a record number of projects in the sector through a milestone subsidy scheme later this year.
Under the scheme, offshore wind developers will compete for contracts worth up to £200m a year, and onshore wind and solar farms will be in line for their first subsidies in more than five years.
Alongside the £200m funding pot for offshore windfarms, there will be a further £55m available to emerging renewable technologies such as tidal power, of which £24m will be earmarked for floating offshore wind farms.
Dan McGrail, chief executive of the trade organisation Renewable UK, said the scheme could bring forward private investment of over £20bn in a boost to jobs and the UK supply chain, while reducing energy bills and helping the UK to meet its climate targets.
“The sector had called on government to increase the ambition for new renewable energy capacity at the upcoming auction and that is reflected in today’s announcement,” he said.
The government has referred to the upcoming auction as the “biggest ever renewable support scheme” – despite offering less than the £325m and £290m offered in 2015 and 2017 respectively – because the falling cost of renewables means it may secure more renewable energy capacity than the government’s first three auctions combined.
Renewable energy developers will compete for the funds in a reverse auction scheduled for December, in which the lowest-cost projects will secure a contract that guarantees the price for the clean electricity they generate.
In the last auction, offshore wind costs tumbled by a third to record lows of about £40 per megawatt-hour, well below the price of electricity in the wholesale energy market, meaning households are unlikely to face higher charges on their energy bills.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the energy minister, said the latest round of the support scheme would “support the next generation of renewable electricity projects needed to power our homes” and help meet the UK’s climate targets.
Boris Johnson set out plans almost a year ago to support 40GW of offshore wind farms by 2030, or enough to power the equivalent of every home in the UK, as part of the government’s plan to “build back greener” from Covid-19.
Heat pumps are considered an important tool in cutting carbon emissions from the UK’s housing stock, which is responsible for about 14% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions, mostly due to a reliance on gas heating and poorly insulated homes.
But the UK’s rollout is “seriously lagging” behind other European countries including Poland, Slovakia and Estonia, according to a recent analysis of industry data by Greenpeace.
Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s policy director, said that if the government “wants a chance to catch up, it needs a proper strategy and enough cash” to make the cost of installing a heat pump – and upgrading energy efficiency – the same as replacing a gas boiler.
A government spokesman said the strategy paper will set out how the government plans to help the upfront costs of heat pumps to fall in the coming years while keeping “fairness and affordability for both households and taxpayers at the heart of our plans”.
We publish this long-term energy outlook at the start of 2021, after a year that has brought extraordinary challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic crisis caused unprecedented disruption in the energy landscape—and the path to recovery remains uncertain.
At the same time, the world’s energy systems are going through rapid transitions that are triggered by simultaneous shifts in technological development, regulations, consumer preferences, and investor sentiments. Our Reference Case sheds light on these developments and provides a synthesis on how energy demand will evolve.
In the short term, a return to pre-COVID-19 levels is projected in one to four years
The impacts of COVID-19 have permanently shifted energy-demand curves. Although demand rebounds to 2019 levels in one to four years, it does not return to the previous growth path. Electricity and gas rebound more quickly than oil demand, and coal does not return to pre-COVID-19 demand levels.
Recent work by McKinsey on the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on economic growth introduces a set of scenarios, reflecting varying levels of effectiveness of the public-health response and speed and strength of policy interventions.
From these scenarios, two were selected as most likely outcomes by a group of more than 2,000 executive respondents globally: “Virus Contained; growth returns” and “Muted Recovery.” At the time of this report’s publication
(January 2021), the latest actual numbers show a trajectory that comes closest to “Virus Contained; growth returns.” Consequently, this scenario underlies the projections in our report.
Given the unparalleled size of many economic-recovery packages, the focus of the stimulus measures plays a key role in shaping energy systems in the decades to come.
Source: Mckinsey
Source: Mckinsey
Source: Mckinsey
Source: McKinsey
In the longer term, fundamental shifts already emerging pre-COVID-19 are going to be the key drivers of the energy transition
As economies and energy markets recover from the short-term impact of COVID-19, fundamental shifts in the energy system continue, and the coming decades will likely see a rapid acceleration of the energy transition.
Power wins and hydrogen changes the landscape . . .
Power consumption doubles by 2050 as energy demand electrifies, wealth increases, and green hydrogen picks up momentum.
. . . and low-cost renewables dominate power markets
Renewables become cheaper than existing fossil plants within the next decade. This triggers a sharp uptake in the installed capacity of solar photovoltaics and onshore and offshore wind (5 TW of new solar and wind capacity installed by 2035—which is equivalent to fivefold growth).
Peaks in fossil-fuel demand keep coming closer
Projected peaks in demand for hydrocarbons have come forward. Oil demand peaks in 2029 and gas in 2037, whereas coal shows a steady decline.
Yet in the Reference Case fossil fuels continue to play a major role in the energy system by 2050, driven by growth in areas such as chemicals and aviation.
In the Accelerated Transition scenario, demand for fossil fuels continues to decline, particularly oil and coal. Peak oil demand could move forward by five years to the early 2020s, at a level less than 1 MMB/D above 2019 levels.
Source: McKinsey
After a long period of growth, global liquids demand peaks in the late 2020s, followed by a 10% decline in demand by 2050. This is mainly driven by slowing car-park growth, enhanced engine efficiency in road transport, and increased electrification.
Global coal demand peaked in 2014 and continues to decline by almost 40% from 2019 to 2050. Under increasing regulatory and financial pressure, coal’s role in the power sector diminishes, contributing to the overall decline in demand.
Gas continues to increase its share of global energy demand in the next ten to 15 years—the only fossil fuel to do so—and then peaks in the late 2030s. Even in the Reference Case, gas demand in 2050 is 5% higher than today.
Nearly a quarter of the UK’s electricity came from wind turbines in 2020 – making the country the leader among the G20 for share of power sourced from the renewable energy, a new analysis finds.
The UK also moved away from coal power at a faster rate than any other G20 country from 2015 to 2020, according to the results.
And it ranked second in the G20, behind Germany, for the proportion of electricity sourced from both wind and solar in 2020.
However, Britain is still lagging behind when it comes to fossil gas, according to analysis by the climate and energy think tank Ember.
The country sourced 37 per cent of its electricity from fossil gas in 2020, placing it ninth in the G20 and above the global average of 23 per cent.
“It’s crazy how much wind has grown in the UK and how much it has offset coal, and how it’s starting to eat at gas,” Dave Jones, Ember’s global lead analyst, told The Independent.
But it is important to bear in mind that “we’re only doing a great job by the standards of the rest of the world”, he added.
UK is second behind Germany in G20 for share of electricity sourced from wind and solar (Ember)
Ember’s Global Electricity Review notes that the world’s power sector emissions were two per cent higher in 2020 than in 2015 – the year that countries agreed to slash their greenhouse gas pollution as part of the Paris Agreement.
Power generated from coal fell by a record amount from 2019 to 2020, the analysis finds. However, this decline was greatly facilitated by lockdowns introduced to stop the spread of Covid-19, which stifled electricity demand, the analysts say.
Coal is the most polluting of the fossil fuels. The UK government hopes to convince all countries to stop building new coal-fired power stations at Cop26, a climate conference that is to be held in Glasgow later this year.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has also called for all countries to end their “deadly addiction to coal”.
At a summit held earlier this month, he described ending the use of coal in electricity generation as the “single most important step” to meeting the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
“There is definitely a concern that, in the pandemic year of 2020, coal hasn’t fallen as fast as it needed to,” said Mr Jones.
“There is concern that, once electricity demand returns, we won’t be seeing that decline in coal anymore.”
Will people in price-sensitive Asia only buy clean energy if it’s cheap? Eco-Business spoke to clean energy entrepreneurs about why consumer behaviour is lagging behind investment trends in Asia, and what can be done to persuade more people to switch to clean electricity.
Clean energy is on the rise, even in Asia, where fossil fuels play a stubbornly resilient role in the region’s energy story. The proportion of renewable energy consumed in Asia is projected to double within the decade.
The big question is, what will persuade the region’s consumers to switch to clean electricity? Will people in price-sensitive Asia only buy clean energy if it’s cheap?
A GlobalData consumer survey in 2019 showed that 45 per cent of consumers in Asia Pacific prefer to buy products that are “better for the environment”. Asian consumers also expect brands to care about society. Compared to just 41 per cent in the US and 46 per cent in the UK, 58 per cent of Asian consumers prefer to see brands leading meaningful initiatives in their communities.
But that does sentiment translate to the energy people consume?
Martin Lim, CEO of Singapore-based marketplace for retail electricity, Electrify.sg, says that although investors are showing a growing appetite for clean energy in Asia, consumers seem to be behind the curve. Out of about 66,000 residential rooftops in Singapore, less than 1,400 have adopted solar panels in their homes, he notes. Why?
Requiring about $20,000 in upfront investment, a home solar panel system in Singapore would still need about 6-10 years before it starts to provide owners with “free energy”; after offsetting the energy expenditure of household consumption.
Jeffrey Char, founder and CEO of SOGO Energy, a Japan-based renewable energy investment firm that serves rural communities in developing countries, believes that Asian consumers still tend to be rather price-sensitive, even in wealthier countries like Singapore.
Even if there’s a one-cent difference, the percentage of consumers who would pay extra would probably drop from 90 per cent to 10 per cent.
Jeffrey Char, CEO and founder, SOGO Energy
Increasing financial pressures in the region like household debt only serve to heighten the price sensitivity to “non-essential” or “luxury” goods.
Furthermore, Asian consumers are twice as likely as their American counterparts to tighten their wallets after a crisis. 60 per cent of consumers in this region are putting more money aside for rainy days post Covid-19, according to a study by Bain and Facebook.
Karlo Edesson Abril, accounts manager of Filipino solar energy developer SunAsia Energy, thinks that economic status is still the largest determinant of individuals’ power to vote with their wallets.
“Sustainability and green energy is the way to go, but for people who are just living from day to day, every peso counts. So if green energy is cheap, people will go for it, but price is still the main concern.”
What is causing clean energy inertia in Asia?
What experts agree on is that the lack of consumer demand is not due to the inefficacies of renewables, and emerging reports are proving renewables to be the lowest cost form of energy in many countries.
But larger factors are at play that makes switching less worthwhile.
For one, clean energy might cost more in developed countries, because of existing grid and pricing infrastructure that favours traditional energy sources.
“In Singapore, you flip a switch and the lights come on. In other parts of Asia, you have people whose generators go out all the time because of poor infrastructure. They’re using fossil fuels in a very suboptimal way, and it ends up being very expensive and very dirty. Having the choice to invest in clean energy versus fossil fuels from scratch, it makes sense for them to choose the former,” explains Char.
It is for this reason that rural Asia and Africa might leapfrog developed economies to clean energy “in the same way they didn’t build telephone networks and jumped straight to cell phones,” he says.
Levelling the playing field
While meeting global climate targets will likely depend on stronger demand for clean electricity in Asia, stakeholders are using a variety of approaches to help consumers make the switch.
SOGO allows its clients to completely avoid transmission costs by installing solar power locally, giving clean energy a 9 yen (USD$0.086) competitive advantage.
On a governmental level, support seems to be headed in the right direction. “I think it’s commendable for The Department of Energy in the Philippines to start quantifying generation instead of capacity, looking more at consumer-centric prices (kilowatt-hours) instead of installed capacity,” says Abril.
Nevertheless, it remains hard for clean energy projects to remain financially sustainable if they drain state funds with feed-in tariffs.
Perhaps the most recent and notable example of this is the Japanese government’s cutting of feed-in-tariff purchase prices towards 2019, even though the return of investment for post-Fukushima solar farms was staggeringly profitable.
“The investments in these solar farms [in Japan] took only about four years or less to break-even, which is twice as fast as that of anywhere else around the world,” Lim says. “But feed-in-tariffs is a model that eventually stops because the premium is paid for by the state.”
Governmental initiatives need to be complemented by market mechanisms to promote organic demand.
Clean energy washing?
A looming danger is that consumers might purchase the cheapest available clean energy plan—which might not actually reduce their carbon footprint.
Since the launch of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme 15 years ago, mandating big emitters to offset via carbon reduction projects, the demand boom for carbon offsets has resulted in incidences of fraud and greenwashing.
Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), which provide proof of a carbon offset, are a reliable way to offset emissions. Whereas a typical reforestation project might be time and cost-intensive, solar and wind projects are easy to audit even on a large scale, according to Kang Jen Wee, founder and CEO of renewable energy certification company Trecs.ai. But the currency is not flawless; RECs could be subject to double-counting or false reporting.
RECs emerged more than 10 years ago, as a tool to address flaws in the carbon crediting system. At that time, there was no high-speed broadband, but today we can tap on real-time data to avoid greenwashing.
Martin Lim, founder and CEO, Electrify.sg
To ensure a reliable offset, there are firms that specialise in verification, such as Trecs.ai, which holds REC sellers accountable. Using blockchain technology, every transaction can be tracked in the public domain, and consumers can find out exactly where their clean energy originates from by keying in the serial number of their purchased REC.
Meanwhile, Electrify works to attribute the energy in real-time, limiting the amount of clean energy one can buy to offset their emissions at each time period. This ensures sustainable rates of consumption.
Ultimately, consumers are more likely to switch to clean energy if they are made aware of its benefits.
“If we put environmental education in the general curriculum, we can educate everyone of the benefits of clean energy,” says Abril. Sustainability Reporting is also an important way to employees to be more conscious of their energy consumption choices and therefore carbon footprint, he says.
