WASHINGTON –While some countries have been burning more fossil fuels such as coal this year in response to natural gas shortages caused by the war in Ukraine, that effect is expected to be short-lived, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday in its annual World Energy Outlook, which forecasts global energy trends to 2050.
In the United States, Congress approved more than US$370 billion in spending for such technologies under the recent Inflation Reduction Act. Japan is pursuing a new “green transformation” program that will help fund nuclear power, hydrogen and other low-emissions technologies. China, India and South Korea have all ratcheted up national targets for renewable and nuclear power.
Meanwhile, global investment in clean energy is now expected to rise from US$1.3 trillion in 2022 to more than $2 trillion annually by 2030, a significant shift, the agency said. By contrast, many world leaders hope to limit average global warming to around 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid some of the most dire and irreversible risks from climate change, such as widespread crop failures or ecosystem collapse. That would require much steeper cuts in greenhouse gases, with emissions not just peaking in the next few years but falling nearly in half by the end of this decade, scientists have said.
Still, that is a far smaller increase than some analysts had feared when war in Ukraine first broke out. The rise in emissions would have been three times as large had it not been for a rapid deployment of wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles worldwide, the agency said. Soaring energy prices and weak economic growth in Europe and China also contributed to keep emissions down.
As European nations race to reduce their reliance on Russian oil and gas, Russia is likely to face challenges in finding new markets in Asia, particularly for its natural gas, the report said. As a result, Russian fossil fuel exports are unlikely to return to their prewar levels.
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