Annual investments of about $1 trillion in renewable energy and up to $130 billion in hydrogen by 2030 are needed to avert the catastrophic effects of climate change, a landmark report concluded on behalf of 45 world leaders.
The report calculated that by 2030, the world would need to add four times the amount of renewable energy deployed each year by 2021, and drastically scale up hydrogen production to achieve net-zero emissions and reduce global warming from burning fossil fuels. against fuels.
According to research published jointly by the International Energy Agency, the International Renewable Energy Agency and the UN ahead of the COP27 climate summit in November, 8 TW of additional renewable capacity is needed by 2030, up from about 3 TW last year.
The supply of “renewable” and “low-carbon” hydrogen, with the latter using carbon capture technology to capture emissions, should also increase to around 150 Mt by 2030, doubling each year from 2023.
The paper was commissioned by the 45 governments that make up 70 percent of the global economy and which at the UN climate summit signed a commitment, dubbed the “breakthrough agenda,” to make clean technologies affordable and accessible by 2030. These include the US, EU bloc countries, Australia, Egypt and Nigeria.
The findings focused on the five main areas of energy, road transport, steel, hydrogen and agriculture, which together account for more than 50 percent of current global emissions.
Recommendations for achieving the targets included the negotiation of international standards for “low-carbon” hydrogen, higher minimum energy performance standards for energy-intensive devices and common target dates for all new road vehicles to be emission-free.
Currently, countries, and even within states and regions, are taking a step-by-step approach to achieving these goals.
“Progress is not yet fast enough to reach the goals agreed by countries under the Breakthrough Agenda,” it added.
Countries and companies must work together to create and scale markets for clean technologies, the report said, including through procurement commitments and processes to channel financing and technical assistance to coal-producing countries to move away from fossil fuels.
One of the biggest impediments was a “cooperation gap” that threatened to delay reaching net zero “by decades,” it warned.
While the global energy crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine has increased demand for renewable energy, difficult economic conditions have prompted countries to adopt protectionist stances.
“We are entering the first real global energy crisis. . .[which is]affects almost everyone around the world,” said Fatih Birol, IEA Executive Director. “It’s important to separate fact from fiction. . . clean energy is not an engine but a lasting solution to the current and next energy crisis.”
Developing countries have branded European countries’ calls for alternative gas supplies as hypocritical to replace those that are no longer imported from Russia, as rich countries have urged poorer countries not to develop fossil fuel reserves to curb global warming .
“We cannot leave Africa to have only renewable energy sources,” Senegal’s president Macky Sall said at the Africa Adaptation Summit this month. “No country has managed to develop using renewable energy sources alone.”
Francesco La Camera, director general of Irena, pushing for international clean energy cooperation, said that while it was “needed more than ever”, the energy, food and inflation crises meant that the “concept of cooperation on the being tested”.
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