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The 2030 targets laid out by the United Nations for the seventh Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 7) are clear enough: provide affordable access to energy; expand use of renewable sources; improve energy efficiency year on year; and enhance international cooperation in support of clean-energy research, development and infrastructure. Meeting those goals, however, will be anything but simple. As seen in many of the editorials in this series examining the SDGs at their halfway stage, the world is falling short.
This is due, at least in part, to the influence of the fossil-fuel industry, which drives the economics and, often, the politics of countries large and small, rich and poor. Rising human prosperity, as measured by economic growth, has long been linked to an abundance of fossil fuels. Many politicians fear that the pursuit of clean-energy sources will compromise that economic development. The latest science clearly counters this view — but the voice of the research community is not being heard in the right places. To meet the targets embodied in SDG 7, that has to change.
There is much to be done. In 2021, some 675 million people worldwide still did not have access to electricity. This is down from 1.1 billion a decade or so ago, but the pace of progress has slowed. On the basis of current trends, 660 million people, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa, will remain without electricity by 2030. And projections indicate that some 1.9 billion people will still be using polluting and inefficient cooking systems fuelled by coal and wood (see go.nature /3s8d887). This is bad news all round: for health, biodiversity and the climate.
Carbon emissions hit new high: warning from COP27
Achieving the energy-access targets was always going to be a stretch, but progress has been slow elsewhere, too. Take energy efficiency. More energy efficiency means less pollution, and energy efficiency has increased by around 2% annually in the past few years. But meeting the target for 2030 — to double the rate of the 1990–2010 average — would require gains of around 3.4% every year for the rest of this decade.
The picture for renewable energy is similarly mixed. Despite considerable growth in wind and solar power to generate grid electricity, progress in the heat and transport sectors remains sluggish. Renewable energy''s share of total global energy consumption was just 19.1% in 2020, according to the latest UN tracking report, but one-third of that came from burning resources such as wood.
One reason for the slow progress is the continued idea that aggressive clean-energy goals will get in the way of economic development. It''s easier and more profitable for major fossil-fuel producers to simply maintain the status quo. Just last month, ministers from the G20 group of the world''s biggest economies, including the European Union, India, Saudi Arabia and the United States, failed to agree on a plan to phase out fossil fuels and triple the capacity of renewable energy by 2030.
US aims for electric-car revolution — will it work?
The lesson from research is that it might be easier, not harder, to address these challenges together. In 2021, researcher Gabriela Iacobuţă at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability in Bonn and her colleagues showed that technologies centred on renewable resources and efficiency tend to come with few trade-offs and many benefits, including improved public health and wealth, thanks to a cleaner environment and better jobs2. And climate scientist Bjoern Soergel at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and his colleagues found that a coordinated package of climate and development policies could achieve most of the SDGs while limiting global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels3.
The study assessed 56 indicators across all 17 SDGs. One proposed intervention is an international climate finance mechanism that would levy fees on carbon emissions that would be redistributed through national programmes to reduce poverty. A second focuses on promoting healthy diets — including reducing the consumption of meat, the production of which requires a lot of water, energy and land. This would benefit people on low incomes by lowering both food and energy prices.
The biggest challenge lies in translating these models to the real world. To do so, we need leaders who are not bound by outmoded thinking, are aware of the latest science and can draw on the research to build public support for the necessary energy transition. We require more national and international public institutions that are willing to address problems at the system level. And all of this needs a science community that is willing and able to champion knowledge and evidence.
Nature 620, 245 (2023)
doi: https://doi /10.1038/d41586-023-02510-y
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For the 760 million people in the world who lack access to electricity, the introduction of modern clean energy solutions can enable vital services such as improved healthcare, better education, and internet access, thus creating new jobs, improving livelihoods, and reducing poverty.
Driven by the global energy crisis and policy momentum, renewable power – led by solar photovoltaic and wind energy – has grown dramatically. In 2020, modern renewables accounted for 12.6 per cent of the total final energy consumption and the total final energy demand grew by 19 per cent between 2009 and 2019.
In 2019, US$366 billion was invested in renewables, with the International Energy Association (IEA) forecasting that cumulative world renewable capacity will reach more than 4,500 GW at the end of 2024, equal to the total power capacity of China and the United States.
While these are encouraging numbers, annual capacity additions of renewable power are insufficient to deliver the transition to a low-carbon energy system. With thermal energy representing approximately half of global final energy demand – the role of renewable heating and cooling needs to be accelerated for industry and buildings.
In order to limit warming to 1.5°C, the world requires three times more renewable energy capacity by 2030, or at least 11,000 GW. This was recognized at COP28, as countries signed the Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency Pledge, committing to work together to triple the world''s installed renewable energy generation capacity to at least 11,000 GW by 2030.
While the world intensifies the clean energy transition, we will need over three billion tonnes of energy transition minerals and metals to deploy wind, solar, energy storage and more. Yet, critical minerals come with environmental, social, economic, geopolitical and trade.
Many types of barriers hamper the widespread deployment of renewable energy. UNEP helps to break down the barriers by: Providing advice to governments on policies that create a more favourable enabling environment for renewable energy; Working with the finance sector to encourage investment by lowering risks for renewable energy projects; Raising awareness of successful approaches to policy and technology options; Providing information, and dispelling myths about renewable energy.
UNEP engages directly with the public and private sector to develop sustainable markets for renewable energy. This is accomplished through individual projects and programmes, as well as through the development of policy frameworks, principles and norms, and networks of practice.
UNEP also collaborates with REN21, a global renewable energy community of actors from science, governments, NGOs, and industry which provides peer-reviewed facts, figures, and analysis of global technology, policy and market developments.
Finally, UNEP also promotes the development of renewable energy by driving the financial community''s investment in low-carbon development and sustainable energy. Through a range of projects, UNEP engages with governments, private sector and financial institutions to leverage private sector financing and provide turnkey and cost-efficient solutions that accelerate the transition to a more sustainable world and support governments in achieving their national low-carbon development ambitions.
UNEP, through the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre and in partnership with the Danish Energy Agency and the China Renewable Energy Engineering Institute, has set up the Sino-Danish Clean and Renewable Heating Centre. The Centre promotes best practices in energy mapping, heat planning, legislation, technical and real-life applications of clean and renewable heating through a collection of knowledge products, an expert panel and workshops and training.
The pace of deployment of some clean energy technologies – such as solar PV and electric vehicles – shows what can be achieved with sufficient ambition and policy action, but faster change is urgently needed across most components of the energy system to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, according to the IEA''s latest evaluation of global progress.
Published today, the annual update of the IEA''s Tracking Clean Energy Progress online resource reveals remarkable gains in the past year. Electric car sales reached a record high of more than 10 million in 2022, a nearly tenfold increase in just five years. Renewable electricity capacity additions rose to 340 gigawatts (GW), their largest ever deployment. As a result, renewables now account for 30% of global electricity generation. Investment in clean energy reached a record USD1.6 trillion in 2022, an increase of almost 15% from 2021, demonstrating continued confidence in energy transitions even in an uncertain economic climate.
The transition to clean energy is occurring at different speeds across regions and sectors, however. For example, nearly 95% of global electric car sales in 2022 took place in China, the United States and Europe. Stronger international cooperation is needed to spread progress on electric cars and other key technologies to all regions, particularly emerging and developing economies.
Clean energy deployment is also occurring faster in some parts of the energy system – such as electricity generation and passenger cars – where costs have fallen and technologies are already relatively mature. Meanwhile, rapid innovation is still needed to bring to market clean technologies for parts of the energy system where emissions are harder to tackle, such as heavy industry and long-distance transport. Positive steps on innovation have been made in the past few years, but a further acceleration is needed to soon bring to market more low-emissions technologies for these areas.
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