Image by Biel Morro.
Donald Trump’s victory as next president of the United States is depressing news for climate protection. He already made clear that under his presidency the US will drop out of the Paris agreement which binds countries to the 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius limit.
Trumps announcement comes as no surprise of course, since he already did drop out in his first term, but under Biden Washington rejoined the treaty. And everyone knows: Trump and leading figures of the Republican party either deny, that climate change is happening, or say that it is irrelevant und we should not do anything real about it. They want the fossil fuel industry keep running and profits pouring into the pockets of the wealthy owners and managers of the oil, gas and coal infrastructure whatever the costs for everyone else.
As Republicans and MAGA extremists prepare for regaining control over the White House as well as House and Senate in Congress, the climate summit, the latest Conference of the Parties (COP29) is taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan. Yet another petrostate hosting the summit after Qatar last year. We will once again see fossil fuel lobbyists inundate the conference hallways. Last time there were 2,456 of them. This is like an auto convention held by a bike company while anti-auto activists run the show. No wonder that the group Global Witness caught the head of the COP29, deputy energy minister of Azerbaijan Elnur Soltanov, promoting oil and gas deals during the climate talks.
In Europe there is also a backlash going on against climate policies and movements. Right wing parties with an anti-climate agenda are on the rise. Almost everywhere in the industrial world the political landscape in regards to progressive climate policies is overshadowed by dark clouds, while the climate crisis is escalating and the window of opportunity for a turnaround is rapidly closing.
But this is not the whole picture. What is left out is the potential for a real shift to renewables globally, the centerpiece for bringing down greenhouse gas emissions. And here we have some good news. So let’s see where we are and what could be.
The Future of Humanity Is at Stake
The goal of the energy transition should obviously be to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from energy production and bring them down to zero, thereby limiting the greenhouse effect and global heating of the earth’s surface. But that has failed in recent decades. And it continues to fail, at least worldwide.
Or to put it another way: we are at an historic emissions peak, although it is unclear whether it will continue to rise in the coming years, plateau at the same level, or start to fall.
The fact is that not only have greenhouse gas emissions not been reduced in recent decades, but they have continued to rise in a steadily increasing curve. Last year, too, annual emissions rose by 2.1 percent compared to the previous year and reached around 40 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (equivalent = conversion of other greenhouse gases such as methane to CO2). This year again more emissions than last year, an increase of 2 percent to the new record level of 41.6 gigatons according to the Global Carbon Project.
The failure to change global energy policy is already having dramatic consequences. The increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has raised the average temperature by around 1.2 degrees Celsius.
This is leading to an ever-increasing number of heat and storm records, as well as an growing number of weather extremes such as devastating droughts, floods like those in Eastern Europe or Spain, or extraordinary hurricanes, for example on the US East Coast, to name just the most obvious events.
Many of the Earth’s “vital signs” have reached peak levels, suggesting that “future of humanity hangs in the balance,” according to a group of the world’s most experienced climate experts in the latest study, “The 2024 State of the Climate Report”.
Natural Tipping Points
More and more scientists are now looking at the possibility of societal collapse, the report says. It assessed 35 critical Earth indicators in 2023, finding that 25 of them were worse than ever, including carbon dioxide levels. This points to a “critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis,” it said.
The researchers identified 28 feedback loops, including increasing emissions from melting permafrost, which could help trigger several tipping points, such as the collapse of the massive Greenland ice cap. The conclusion of the study:
“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.”
Rapid Energy Transition Is Possible
To avert this threat, a rapid energy transition is an absolute necessity.
Global emissions would have to be almost halved by 2030, in just six years, according to scientific scenarios, in order to still be able to meet the 1.5 to 2 degree target set by the Paris Climate Treaty and recommended by climate researchers as an upper limit due to the escalation of damages if the world passes the threshold. By 2050, greenhouse gas emissions would then have to be completely phased out.
In view of the prevailing trends, this seems an almost impossible task. But in fact it is not, even though the time pressure is enormous. The conditions for an effective and rapid energy transition have never been better than they are today.
There are two main reasons for optimism.
Firstly, the accelerating technological progress in renewable energies and the ongoing electrification of fossil fuel sectors (like transport, heating, etc.) make it easier to implement the energy transition.
Secondly, renewable energies are becoming increasingly cheaper. They are already the cheapest form of energy in most cases.
Accelerating Efficiency
Regarding the first point:
The efficiency of solar modules has risen steadily. This defines how much sunlight can be converted into electricity.
Today’s standard solar cells already convert about 20 to 22 percent of sunlight into electrical energy. However, new research results published in the journal “Nature” show that future solar cells could achieve an efficiency of up to 34 percent.
The new top-performing cells would capture an additional 60 percent of solar energy. This means that fewer panels are needed to generate the same amount of energy, which reduces installation costs and the amount of space (or roof area) required for solar parks, as well as promising more profits for solar power producers. Researchers assume that efficiency can be further increased in the future.
A Chinese company also recently announced that it had produced the first silicon solar module made entirely from recycled materials. All of this makes solar energy more and more attractive, also economically, while mass production makes production cheaper.
Electrification 2.0
Similar technological leaps can also be seen in wind power, where increasing hub height, improving rotors and materials has greatly increased the efficiency of wind turbines and thus the amount of electricity that can be produced. Next year, a wind turbine is expected to be installed with 13 to 15 megawatts (MW) of power capacity. Just ten years ago, the record was 4 MW.
There has also been progress in the electrification of sectors that have previously been dominated by fossil fuels, such as individual transportation and heating.
Almost 14 million new electric cars were registered worldwide in 2023, raising the total number of electric cars on the road to 40 million. Sales of electric cars in 2023 were 3.5 million higher than in 2022, an increase of 35 percent year-on-year. And it is more than six times as much as in 2018, just five years earlier.
Half of all electric cars are driven in China. Between 2021 and 2022, sales of electric vehicles there increased from 1.3 million to 6 million, a third of global sales.
If the EU and US had not put a stop to the boom by weakening support for the switch to electric cars and announcing tariffs on Chinese EVs, the global figures would look even better.
Electric Cars Are Getting Cheaper
The future belongs to the electric car, not least because the economic conditions are getting better and better. Studies show that today half of all fully electric cars are cheaper to run than comparable combustion engine models within five years of driving them. This is because electric cars have a clear advantage to gas-powered cars during operation.
Some electric car models take longer to realize their cost benefits, mainly because luxury features drive up the purchase price. However, since the prices of electric cars are falling, this will soon be history.
The trend is clear, especially since the batteries for electric vehicles are becoming more efficient, powerful, durable and cheaper. It is estimated that the price will fall by 50 percent by 2026.
Heat Pumps Are Beating Gas Boilers
Climate-neutral technologies are increasingly competitive when it comes to heating homes, if they are not already on the fast track. The latest heat pump models, for example, are three to five times more energy efficient than gas boilers. This also has economic implications. In its study “The Future of Heat Pumps”, the International Energy Agency (IEA) states:
“The average household or business that uses a heat pump spends less on energy than those using a gas boiler. These savings offset the higher upfront costs for heat pumps in many markets today – in some, even without subsidies. The economic proposition of heat pumps improves in the context of today’s energy price spikes: household savings range from USD 300 per year in the United States to USD 900 in Europe. With appropriate support for poorer households to manage the upfront costs, heat pumps can meaningfully address energy poverty, with energy bill savings in low‐income households ranging between 2% and 6% of their household income after moving away from a natural gas boiler.”
In recent years, the sale of heat pumps has therefore also risen sharply worldwide, even if it fell slightly by three percent last year. For the IEA, this is an effect of strong inflation and gas prices falling again (in the wake of historic, tax-financed subsidies), which discouraged consumers from making a major investment during this period and saying goodbye to natural gas.
However, the attractiveness of clean heating technology for consumers could, as the IEA emphasizes, be increased by government support for the purchase. Since heat pumps are, as already mentioned, more cost-effective in operation than fossil fuel heating, the switch ultimately pays off for households, while large-scale heat pumps already exist for the industry.
The Scandinavians Are Leading the Way
The Scandinavian countries have been pioneers in this area, having long been dependent on heating oil. Sweden, Norway and Finland may have the coldest climate in Europe. However, all three countries now have more than 40 heat pumps per 100 households, more than in any other country in the world. And the expansion curve is steeply rising.
The reason for this development: across different governments, the switch has been successfully enforced by subsidies, regulations and bans. Most Scandinavians no longer have to worry about volatile, ever-rising natural gas prices, which can only be insufficiently offset by the use of taxpayers’ money.
Price Is the Deciding Factor
And that brings us to the second point. With the increasing efficiency of solar modules and wind turbines, the electricity they generate has become cheaper, which is of course also a positive factor for advancing the climate-neutral electrification.
The “World Energy Transitions Outlook 2023” by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) states that …
“The costs of renewable electricity continue to decline globally, and renewables are now the most affordable power generation option in most regions. In 2021, 163 gigawatts (GW) of renewable power generation capacity produced electricity that cost less than the electricity generated from the cheapest source of new fossil fuel-based capacity. These 163 GW accounted for 73% of the total new renewable power generation capacity added globally.”
As the costs of renewable energy and green electricity continue to fall in the future, due to technological progress and economies of scale as production increases, the trend can’t be stopped.
Solar and Wind on the Rise
This turnaround actually began ten years ago and is now gaining momentum. Until 2014, renewables accounted for a smaller share of annual growth in electricity capacity than fossil fuels. Since then, the ratio has been radically reversed. Last year, 86 percent of the increase was due to solar, wind and hydroelectric power.
In 2023, global renewable electricity capacity rose by a record net amount of 473 gigawatts (GW) to 3,870 GW. This is an increase of around 14 percent over 2022.
Exponential Growth
What we have seen in recent years could be the beginning of an exponential growth curve, the start of a world-changing explosion, explains award-winning US environmental journalist Bill McKibben.
At the beginning of September, Bloomberg predicted that the global installation of new solar modules would reach 592 gigawatts this year – 33 percent more than in the previous year. McKibben continues:
“The point is, when you’re doing this a few years in a row the totals start to grow very very fast. When something that provides one percent of your electricity doubles to two percent, that doesn’t mean much—but when something that supplies ten or twenty percent goes up by a third that’s actually quite a lot. And more the next year.”
The US state of California shows how exponential growth according to the S-curve works, says McKibben. He cites Mark Jacobson, professor of engineering at Stanford University and an expert on energy transition models, who reports that in the nearly six-month period from March 7 to September 4, 2024, the use of fossil gas in California’s power grid was 29 percent lower than in 2023.
This means that natural gas used to generate electricity in the world’s fifth largest economy has fallen by almost a third in one year. In 2023, fossil gas supplied 23 percent more electricity to the grid than solar power over the same period. In 2024, these figures were almost exactly reversed.
The Quiet Revolution
And McKibben points to a perhaps even more significant, if less noticed, energy revolution which is taking place in the Global South. Solar panels have become so cheap in recent months that they are now popping up in large numbers in many developing countries.
Without waiting for power companies to take over, businesses and homeowners are turning to electricity to power their lives – and in a clean way.
For example, Pakistanis have bought huge quantities of very cheap Chinese solar panels (amounting to 30 percent of Pakistan’s total electricity capacity) and installed them themselves. This is a reaction to the exploding electricity prices of energy providers in the wake of the fossil energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Western sanctions.
Technology experts Azeem Azhar and Nathan Warren emphasize in an article that Pakistan’s decentralized solar system could reach almost half the capacity of Pakistan’s entire power grid by the end of this year. “This is not just growth, but a quiet revolution in energy production.”
In Africa, too, solar panels are rapidly covering roofs – often unnoticed by statistics. The reason for the boost: they provide more reliable electricity than power plants or diesel generators – and are significantly cheaper. Africa is being flooded with Chinese panels, says Joel Nana, an analyst at Sustainable Energy Africa in Cape Town, according to McKibben.
The Problem: Energy Demand Continues to Grow
But despite significant developments in the expansion of renewable energies and the electrification of fossil fuel dependent sectors around the world, it has not been possible to achieve a global reversal of the greenhouse gas trend.
The reason for this is that energy demand continues to grow, with the fossil fuel industry still benefiting from some of the increase. However, for an effective energy transition, renewables not only need to be expanded, but the burning of coal, gas and oil for energy production must gradually be phased out.
This has not yet happened, but it could soon. The IEA stated in September that global oil demand is declining due to the increasing sales of electric vehicles. In China, demand for gasoline will peak this or next year and then decline sharply. In the UK, where the coal age began, the last coal-fired power plant was closed at the end of this month.
In its latest report, the energy organization also predicts that “demand for fossil fuels” will “peak by the end of the decade”.
The Peak and the Years that Follow
So the peak seems to be in sight. However, it must also be said that that’s not enough. Because to stay within the 1.5 to 2 degree limit, the burning of fossil fuels should not only not increase, but must decrease sharply by 2030.
So there is still a big gap between what is necessary and what is happening, which means that significantly more effort is needed for an effective energy transition, as IRENA notes in Outlook 2023.
In figures: the share of renewables in electricity generation would have to be increased from the current 28 percent to at least 68 percent by 2030, i.e. in six years’ time, almost tripling it, while a considerable proportion of fossil fuel based electricity production would have to be replaced with this increase.
But governments, especially the industrialized countries that are primarily responsible for the climate crisis, are not acting accordingly. As IRENA calculated, national reduction promises worldwide would, at best, reduce CO2 emissions by six percent by 2030 and by 56 percent by 2050 worldwide. This is far from the 50 and 100 percent reduction targets that are needed.
The 7 Trillion Dollar Question
There are some good signs that accelerating change could happen. The EU as a block reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent in 2023, a record drop. But yet this trend must be sustained and broadened in the future, and in the next years likely without the effects of a stagnating economy and sinking energy demand as a result of high inflation, while the rich countries have to massively expand the financial help for the Global South to give them the capacity to also switch rapidly to renewables.
So, in addition to the “silent revolution” of solar and wind energy, strong pressure on governments to change course is still needed. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), around seven trillion dollars, or 7,000 billion dollars, are spent each year on direct and indirect state subsidies for fossil fuels – a record amount – which distorts energy markets and prices, offloads damage and costs onto the general public and puts renewables at a massive disadvantage.
Redirecting these funds to clean energy would be an important, fair and socially responsible way to speed up the energy transition.
If this does not happen, the consequences will have to be borne by people all over the world, especially in the Global South, and by future generations. A new study published in “Nature” concludes that even if CO2 emissions were to be drastically reduced from today, the global economy would have to expect a 19 percent drop in income by 2050 due to climate change. The damage for the year 2050 alone would be around 38 trillion US dollars.
We are literally at a tipping point in the global energy transition. The question is in which direction we want to tip. Trump will not help, of course. But then, Nixon wanted a lot of things not or was indifferent about them which he then was compelled to do. In the end, the US may be pushed to accept global trends, dropping prices for renewables and admit finally: “It’s the energy economy, stupid”.
