It is a (small) note of optimism in the fight against global warming. It comes the day after the course set by the French president on ecological planning and a few weeks of crucial negotiations at the 28th United Nations Climate Conference (COP) in Dubai where the future of fossil fuels should give rise to after bitter debates.
The rapid rise of solar power and electric vehicles over the past two years keeps the most ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement within reach, according to a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). hand.
The “Growth of Clean Energy Technologies”
“The energy sector is evolving more quickly than many people think, but there is still much to do and time is running out,” the IEA said on Tuesday, September 26. The OECD energy agency has updated its “Net Zero Roadmap”, a roadmap for carbon neutrality in 2050, the publication of which in 2021 had left its mark by calling on the world to renounce everything new “now”. oil or gas project.
Over the past two years, “emissions from the energy sector have remained stubbornly high, reaching a new record of 37 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2022”, 1% more than in 2019, notes the IEA. “The path” to the goal of containing global warming to +1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era “has narrowed over the past two years, but the growth of clean energy technologies keeps it open”, wants to believe the IEA, which also calls for “energy efficiency”.
“The development of clean energy is the main factor behind a drop in demand for fossil fuels of more than 25% this decade” and their growth leads to a drop in CO2 emissions in energy by 35%. by 2030, according to its updated scenario.
Fossil fuels expected to peak this decade
© / The Express
The IEA recently claimed that peak demand for all fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal – will be reached “in the next few years” of the decade, thanks to the surge in cleaner energy and electric cars. “As COP28 approaches, the latest scientific data is unequivocal: the era of fossil fuels is coming to an end,” Laurence Tubiana, president of the European Climate Foundation, commented to AFP.
Rich countries must bring forward their carbon neutrality targets to 2045
According to the IEA, “almost all countries must bring forward their carbon neutrality target dates.” The International Energy Agency calls on “rich countries” to bring forward their objective to 2045 and China to 2050. This acceleration, which would consist of bringing forward by five years the neutrality objectives planned in most developed countries – including the States -United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan – and 10 years in China, is necessary to succeed in containing global warming to +1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era, indicates the IEA.
“Even a small delay” in reducing emissions beyond their current commitments, “would result in a global temperature above 1.5°C for almost 50 years”, warns the IEA while a recent report of the UN warned that the objectives of the Paris agreement were threatened by the lack of ambition of countries. However, with current warming of around 1.2 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era, the world is already experiencing an increase in destructive climate disasters, hitting vulnerable populations hardest.
Energy: carbon neutrality objectives by wealth level
© / afp.com/Nalini LEPETIT-CHELLA, Sabrina BLANCHARD
The warning against CO2 capture technologies
A delay in ambitions would also push countries to make greater use of CO2 capture technologies that are “expensive” and still “unproven on a large scale”, estimates the IEA. If such technologies fail to reach the required scale – including filtering 0.1% of the atmosphere each year by 2100 – reducing temperatures to 1.5°C “would not be possible”, warns ‘OUCH.
The agency thus supports the growing criticism of these industrial or nature-based technologies promising to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and store it sustainably.