Wind turbines line the
horizon behind Bada Bagh in Rajasthan, India. Credit: Prisma by Dukas
Presseagentur GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo
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Dr Iain Staffell is a senior lecturer in sustainable energy at Imperial College London’s Centre for Environmental Policy. He leads the Electric Insights project reporting interactive real-time and quarterly summary information on the UK’s electricity mix. |
But how are countries doing so far? In our Energy Revolution Global Outlook report, written with colleagues at Imperial College London and E4tech – and published by Drax – we rank progress in 25 major world economies.
Our report provides a league table of their efforts to clean up electricity generation, switch from oil to electric vehicles, deploy carbon capture and storage, eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and tackle energy efficiency.
The ten charts below compare these 25 countries today and their progress over the last decade.
Progress on clean electricity
Electricity has been the fastest sector of the economy to decarbonise as countries move away from coal and embrace low-cost renewables. Yet the average carbon intensity of electricity worldwide has fallen only 7% in the last decade to 450 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour (gCO2/kWh).
The chart below maps the carbon intensity of electricity generation around the world and ranks the 25 major economies covered by our report. These countries include the G7 group of rich nations along with Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (the “BRICS”) and others. These countries account for 80% of global population, 77% of global GDP and 73% of the world’s CO2 emissions.
Individual countries range from having virtually zero-carbon electricity (in the Nordics, France and New Zealand, left-hand columns in the lower chart) up to near-total reliance on coal (in South Africa and Poland, on the far right).
On the other hand, several large Asian countries – Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia – increased their carbon intensity as they now rely more heavily on coal. China is one of the only Asian countries to be cleaning up its power system, having reduced carbon intensity by one-sixth this decade. The US is also progressing faster than most, behind only the UK and Denmark as in the chart, below.
China’s near-130 gigawatt (GW) solar capacity is roughly equal to the next three largest countries put together: Japan, Germany and the US. For wind capacity, other notable high-fliers include fourth-ranked India and Poland in twelfth, which has a larger wind capacity than Denmark, as shown in the chart, below.
Progress on clean transport
Clean electricity could move beyond homes and offices to power the way we move. Electric vehicles are rapidly coming down in price, and several countries are now legislating the demise of the internal combustion engine over the coming decades.
So far, some 4.5m electric vehicles have been sold worldwide, nearly half of which are in China, and a quarter in the US, as the chart below shows.
Efficiency is not only slow to improve in the transport sector. Improving the energy efficiency of buildings worldwide is urgently needed to reduce the demand for carbon-intensive heating.
Homes in most major countries are using less energy than they did a decade ago, per square metre of floor area. While some of this can be credited to improving building standards and more energy-efficient appliances, the gains may also be due to the residual effects of the global recession and the run of mild winters caused by rising global temperatures.
In some parts of the world, notably China and South Africa, improved living standards have lead to a rapid growth in household energy consumption, as the chart below shows.
Government support for fossil fuels is a perverse feature of many economies, holding back the transition away from coal, oil and gas.
The definition of fossil fuel subsidies is widely disputed. Yet according to the definition used by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) several major fossil fuel producing nations with relatively small populations, such as Norway and Australia, provide hundreds of dollars per capita per year, as the chart below shows. On this measure, the UK also gives large subsidies.
Conclusion
All in all, progress towards clean energy around the world is mixed, with some countries pushing ahead on many fronts but others going backwards. Overall, our rankings show that the world’s nations are falling far short of what is needed and that progress over the next decade must be far stronger to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Links
- Where does global electricity go next?
- Energy Revolution: A Global Outlook
- The IPCC’s special report on climate change at 1.5C
- 50% Drop In Battery Prices In 3 Years
- Nine countries say they’ll ban internal combustion engines. So far, it’s just words.
- Explainer: The challenge of defining fossil fuel subsidies
- Around the world in 22 carbon capture projects
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