With the dead-end nuclear energy scenario binned during the present reign of the Labor government and rapid technological change facilitating renewable energy solutions, we must now come to grips with the principal non-technical barrier to a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, the growth in energy consumption.
All energy must be transitioned, whether it’s currently used in the form of electricity, heat or transportation. A rapid transition is essential to reduce the probability of crossing climate tipping points.[1]
Thanks to decades of research and development, and public education, most people understand that the cheapest and cleanest energy strategy is to electrify transportation and combustion heating while simultaneously converting all electricity generation to renewables. And we must not overlook the need to greatly increase the efficiency of energy use, especially in buildings.
Unfortunately, government focus on the remaining technological challenges that must be solved (e.g. green hydrogen) has resulted in the neglect of the non-technical barriers. The principal non-technical barrier is the continuing growth in Total Final Energy Consumption (TFEC). Despite the rapid growth in renewable energy since year 2000, this barrier has led to the result that the percentage of global TFEC supplied by fossil fuels remained constant at 80 per cent from 2000 to 2019 and subsequently has only decreased slightly. As energy consumption grows, renewable energy is chasing a retreating target.[2]
Electricity consumption will grow as we electrify existing energy consumption in transportation and combustion heating. That essential part of the transition is not the problem. The real problem is the continuing growth in demand for energy services: more transportation, more heating, more data and artificial intelligence centres, and more goods and services generally.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has several scenarios for future growth in global energy consumption as measured by TFEC and the resulting GHG emissions. The IEA’s Stated Policies Scenario models the direction in which today’s modest policy ambitions would take the energy sector. In it, global TFEC grows from 422 exajoules (EJ) in 2022 to 536 EJ in 2050. (For comparison, Australia’s TFEC in 2022-23 was 5.9 EJ.)
In this scenario, how rapidly would renewable energy have to grow to replace all global fossil energy by 2050? We compare the required future growth rate with one of its fastest global growth rates so far, 2.286 EJ from 2021 to 2022. That’s our baseline. Next we consider two growth trajectories for renewable energy, linear and exponential. (For more details, see this article.[3]) Although renewable energy will actually grow in bursts, influenced by political and economic conditions, our two trajectories give us a rough idea of the task.
If renewable energy grew linearly (i.e. in a straight line) from 422 EJ in 2022 to 536 EJ in 2050, then a simple calculation shows that, to replace all global fossil fuel use over that period, renewables would have to grow at about eight times our baseline rate. Doubling and even tripling that baseline rate may be possible, but eight times?
If renewable energy grew exponentially, it would have to double every 6.8 years, doubling four times to 2050. One or two doublings with such a short doubling period may be feasible, but four?
Some technological optimists claim there is no limit to rate at which solar and wind technologies can be manufactured, and that may be true. But they are overlooking a key non-technical constraint on the growth of renewable electricity generation. The demand for renewable electricity is limited by the demand for electricity, which depends on the rate of electrifying transportation and combustion heating. This is very slow on the global scale and quite slow in Australia. Most growth in transportation and combustion heating is still fossil fuelled.
This rate-limiting step results from the slow turnover of existing technologies together with the neoliberal economic ideology of “leave it to the market”. The political power of the fossil fuel and related industries is also a major source of resistance to the transition.[4] Norway’s rapid transition to electric vehicles offers grounds for hope in the transportation sector, but it succeeded by defying neoliberalism and using incentives[5] to speed up its transition.
To have any possibility of retiring all fossil fuels in Australia and the world by 2050, we must reduce total energy consumption. If global TFEC were halved by 2050, renewable energy would only have to grow three times the baseline rate if it followed a linear growth trajectory. Alternatively, with exponential growth, renewables would need three doublings with doubling times of a decade. Both trajectories look feasible.
A future article will address the challenge of reducing energy consumption, and hence economic activity, while transitioning to a good life for all.
[1] https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/Articles/2024/February/climate-tipping-points-Australia
[2] https://illuminem.com/illuminemvoices/we-must-reduce-global-energy-consumption-to-reach-net-zero-emissions-by-2050
[3] https://cleantechnica.com/2024/08/20/the-energy-transition-is-slowed-by-growth-in-consumption/
[3] https://theconversation.com/saving-humanity-heres-a-radical-approach-to-building-a-sustainable-and-just-society-205566#comment_2913683
