Total fossil fuel lock down needed for healing climate: Experts

June 18, 2020

New Delhi: We should put an absolute full stop to fossil fuels usage or else we heading towards a climatic catastrophe, says a global report prepared by experts from across various sectors.

World’s demand for energy keeps on rising exponentially and affects the progress for a better, more energy efficient world. Renewable power has seen an impressive growth over the past five years but not significantly in heating, cooling and transport, says the report prepared by over 350 experts of REN 21 and released by UNEP this week.

REN 21 is a renewable energy global community of players heading from science, academia, governments, NGOs and industry across all renewable energy sectors providing latest facts, figures and analysis to decision makers regarding global developments of technology, policies and market. It annually releases a publication known as the Renewables Global Status Report ( GSR ), the most comprehensively crowd sourced report on renewables.

The experts have made a strong case for stopping the use of fossil fuel for the heating of homes and running of cars.

According to Rana Adib, REN21’s Executive Director, though continuous success has been achieved in consecutive years in the renewable power sector which beats all fuels in growth and competitiveness which is indeed a fantastic progress with many national and international organizations declaring victory, this progress is only a tip of the iceberg as it gets affected by the always increasing world energy needs. ”The entire energy system needs to be changed or else we are deluding ourselves,” he stated.

The report clearly stated that the barriers in the heating, cooling and transport sectors are nearly the same as they were 10 years ago.

As the economic activity has decliend due to Covid-19, energy related CO2 emissions are expected to fall by up to 8% in 2020, but this relief is only temporary as the 2019 emissions were the highest ever. An annual decrease of 7.6 per cent has to be maintained for a period of next 10 years to meet the Paris targets. A decade long lockdown would also not make a sufficient change, said Adib. The world would take forever to even come anywhere near a no-carbon system at this current pace, system and market rules, she also said.

Recovery packages like electric cars and hydrogen for example remain green technologies only if powered by renewables hence such recovery packages would propagate ideas engaging us into a grimy fossil fuel system as some directly promote natural gas, coal or oil and some, with a green focus, only build the roof forgetting the foundation, states Adib.

Rather than traditional stimulus measures, investment in renewables and building efficiency are such “green” recovery measures which are more cost effective and yield greater results, the report states. Renewables remit on job creation, energy sovereignty, accelerated energy access in developing countries, reduced emissions and air pollution, as documented by the report.

Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme ( UNEP ), Inger Andersen said that Renewables being a key pillar of healthy, safe and green COVID-19 recovery are quite cost effective providing an opportunity to make clean economy recovery packages a priority and bring the world closer to meet the goals of Paris Agreement. He also stated that the countries can reap multiple benefits by putting energy transition at the core of economic recovery, the benefits being from improved air quality to employment generation.

It is in contradiction with the estimated actual cost of fossil fuels amounting to USD 5.2 trillion if we take the cost of negative impacts such as air pollution, effects of climate change and traffic congestion also under consideration.

Empowering citizens and communities instead of big fossil fuel producers and consumers renewable energy systems support energy sovereignty and democracy.

A system that serves many or any energy system that serves some is what we have to decide during stimulus money expenditure, Adib states.

He also states that not only money but also any kind of support to the fossil economy, especially heating, cooling and transport should be ended and governments should radically change the market conditions and rules as they did during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrating their leadership.

The report found out that during the rise of final energy demand ( 1.4% annually from 2013 to 2018 ), the total share of renewables barely increased from 9.6% in 2013 to 11% in 2018 despite substantial progress in renewable power generation with heating, cooling and transport sectors lagging far behind.
Also, the same decade-old barriers in the heating, cooling and transport sectors are due to old policies and regulations. It also states that with renewable energy sector employing around 11 million people worldwide in 2018 and the private sector signing power purchase agreements ( PPAs ) in 2019, recording a growth of over 43% from 2018 to 2019 in new renewable power capacity, the global climate strikes have hit unusual levels with millions of people across 150 countries forcing governments to step up climate ambitions. As some countries phase out coal, while some invest in new coal fired power plants the funding from private banks kept increasing each year since the signing of the Paris Agreement and hit a total of USD 2.7 trillion at the end of the three years.

Arthouros Zervos, President of REN21 concluded by saying that governments need to take action beyond economic packages by creating rules and environment for switching to an efficient and renewables based energy system as it should not be believed that the progress in the renewable power sector makes renewables a guaranteed success. (Photo credits-Hrui-shutterstock.com)

—India News Stream