A report by leading energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie warns the world must combine COVID-19 recovery packages with massive investments in renewable energy and low-carbon infrastructure or it will fail to meet a global warming limit target.
Currently, the world is on track for 2.8 degrees Celsius to 3.0°C rise in the global average temperature, above an internationally-agreed limit of below 2C, the report said.
Reuters Newsagency reports the warning came as the International Energy Agency (IEA) said a sharp rise in the deployment of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technology was needed globally if countries are to meet net-zero emissions targets designed to slow climate change.
“Nearly $20 trillion, or 25 per cent of global GDP, is earmarked for spending over the next 12-18 months to deliver a coronavirus vaccine, tackle unemployment, rebuild public health systems and get economies back on track,” said Prakash Sharma, head of markets and transitions for Asia Pacific at Wood Mackenzie.
“This investment figure only has tiny proportions allocated to the promise of the Paris Agreement targets.
“Some jurisdictions, such as the EU, have doubled down on green goals, but it is currently up in the air in the United States and China,” he added.
One obstacle is that more than half the world’s existing energy and industrial capacity, power, cement, refining, chemicals and vehicles, is young and has decades left to run its course.
In addition, more than US$1 trillion a year is needed to build new energy supply capacity, the report said.
Reuters reports coal, gas and oil are still expected to contribute around 80 per cent of primary energy supply by 2040, which is a far higher from the 50 per cent maximum needed for the world to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The report said although there is increasing renewables generation and electric vehicle manufacturing, it is not enough and incentives are needed for investments in carbon capture, use and storage and green hydrogen, both of which have yet to be deployed commercially at scale.
At the same time the IEA reports a growing number of countries and companies are targeting net zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by around the middle of the century in the wake of the 2015 United Nations sponsored Paris Agreement.
To reach that, the amount of CO2 captured must rocket to 800 million tonnes in 2030 from around 40 million tonnes today, the IEA, which advises industrialised nations on energy policies, said in a report.
Up to US$160 billion needs to be invested in the technology by 2030, a ten-fold increase from the previous decade, it added.
“Without it, our energy and climate goals will become virtually impossible to reach,” the IEA head Dr Fatih Birol said in a statement reported by Reuters.
The global economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic risks delaying or cancelling projects dependent on public support, the IEA said.
An oil price slide had also reduced revenues for existing CCUS facilities selling CO2 for so-called enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
However, the IEA added: “Economic recovery packages are a unique window of opportunity for governments to support CCUS alongside other clean energy technologies.”
Referring to a major investment to build two carbon capture plants and an offshore CO2 storage facility, Dr Birol said: “Norway showed its leadership in Europe by making a major funding commitment to the Longship project.
”Nonetheless, the story of CCUS has largely been “one of unmet expectations”, marred by lack of commercial incentives, large capital costs and public opposition to storage, especially onshore, the IEA said.
In 2009, the IEA called for 100 large-scale CCUS projects to be built by 2020 to store around 300 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
To date, just 20 commercial projects are in operation, capturing around 40 million tonnes per year.
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This investment figure only has tiny proportions allocated to the promise of the Paris Agreement targets
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