This morning, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released the annual International Energy Outlook (IEO2019) which provides a forecast re energy through 2050. With projecting that energy demand growth will outpace renewable energy growth (with increased natural gas, oil, and coal usage) through 2050, EIA is forecasting that carbon emissions from energy usage will grow by roughly 0.6% per year … essentially indefinitely.
This projection comes out as the world’s scientists have made clear that carbon emissions must start reducing rapidly and significantly (to net zero emissions by 2050). If not, humanity will face catastrophic climate impacts. Paraphrasing the summary of the EIA’s 2018 Annual Energy Outlook, EIA’s IEO 2019 forecast summary line is:
humanity is EFFed when it comes to an opportunity to mitigate climate change through reduced energy emissions.
There is, however, a silver lining. Almost certainly, in line with EIA’s strong tradition, IEO 2019 is almost certainly too pessimistic when it comes to renewable energy and the ability for clean electrons to displace polluting energy sources.
For example, consider this sentence from page 94:
Although renewables are cost-competitive with new fossil-fired electric generating capacity additions, displacing existing non-renewable capacity requires policy incentives.
Hmmm … this forecasting scenario goes out for 32 years. Today, in the vast majority of the world, renewables aren’t “cost-competitive” but are significantly price advantaged against “new fossil-fired electricity generating capacity”.
More significantly, renewables are “cost-competitive” against existing fossil fuel electric generating plants in much of the world today and will be cost-advantaged against even more today. Around the world, power sector planners are considering whether and how to retire polluting plants earlier so that they can make more profits, providing cleaner electrons, at lower prices to their customers. Clearly, policy incentives would accelerate decisions to retire plants earlier, but straight-forward business decision-making even within existing policy will lead to early retirements of polluting energy systems.
Most stunningly, seemingly contrary to all other forecasting out there, EIA forecast significant coal usage growth and, again, do not see renewable energy driving it out of the marketplace. Carbon Tracker researchers examined this in detail and their conclusions are quite stunning.
42% of global coal capacity is already unprofitable because of high fuel costs; by 2040 that could reach 72% as existing carbon pricing and air pollution regulations drive up costs while the price of onshore wind and solar power continues to fall; any future regulation would make coal power still more unprofitable;
it costs more to run 35% of coal power plants than to build new renewable generation; by 2030 building new renewables will be cheaper than continuing to operate 96% of today’s existing and planned coal plants.
China could save $389 billion by closing [coal] plants in line with the Paris Climate Agreement instead of pursuing business as usual plans; the EU could save $89 billion; the US could save $78 billion; and Russia could save $20 billion.
The core point is well captured by Carbon Tracker energy analyst Sebastian Ljungwaldh,
“Our analysis shows a least-cost power system without coal should be seen as an economic inevitability rather than a clean and green nicety.”
Related posts include:
- New EIA forecast subtitled: We are EFFed …
- Buried in @WhiteHouse staff report: Energy Information Administration planning for a 6C future
- Department of Energy’s “Annual Outlook 2015” is out: what do we know w/out reading it?
- .@WhiteHouse makes clear that @EIAgov does lousy fossil fuel forecasting, ignores that its #Solar and #Wind forecasting even worse
- When it comes to renewable energy forecasting, Japan’s forecasting follows world lead