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COP28: These are the key clean energy targets the world must agree on

Momentum is building for an agreement at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai to triple renewable energy capacity and double the rate of energy efficiency gains by 2030

By James Dinneen

29 November 2023

 

 

 

A solar thermal power station in Dunhuang, China

Jian Fan / Alamy

 

The following is an extract from our climate newsletter Fix the Planet. Sign up to receive it for free in your inbox every month.

A basketball player knows she has played well if she achieves a “triple-double” in a game. That means putting up double digits for three key categories: points, rebounds and assists, for example. At the COP28 climate summit starting this week in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, it is looking as though the world may pull off a “triple-double” of sorts on climate change.

About 100 countries have now said they support an agreement at the meeting to triple renewable energy capacity and to double the rate of energy efficiency gains by 2030.

The plan has its roots in the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) influential roadmap to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. First published in 2021, the report found both targets were necessary to keep emissions from the energy sector in line with the Paris Agreement goals. Just achieving those two targets would deliver two-thirds of the emissions reductions needed by 2030.

Support for adopting this at COP28 has mounted since the IEA began campaigning in July to make both targets a major part of the agenda at the summit. The US, the European Union and the UAE are leading a coalition of backing the proposal, which now includes around 100 countries including Australia, Japan and South Africa. according to Reuters.

Major emitters India and China haven’t joined that pledge, but have signalled their backing for such measures in other international forums, including in a declaration by the powerful G20 group of countries. A joint statement in mid-November by the US and China — the world’s two largest emitters — included language in support of tripling renewables and improving energy efficiency.

Wind and solar sprint

Political support for these targets is welcome, but the numbers behind them are big, and meeting them isn’t a given. Take renewables. In 2022, the world had 3.4 terawatts of renewable energy capacity, more than the total energy capacity of the US and the EU combined. Is tripling that in the next eight years achievable?

Katye Altieri at UK-based energy think tank Ember thinks so. In a report just out, she and her colleagues found existing government targets already put the world on track to double renewables by 2030, mostly through increases in solar and wind capacity. That would involve repeating the record 500 gigawatts of renewables expected to be added in 2023 every year until 2030. “Doubling is a slam dunk,” she says.

Tripling capacity is harder, but also possible, they found. The amount of renewable capacity added each year would have to grow by 17 per cent every year until 2030, about the same rate of increase seen on average between 2016 and 2023. That would involve building 1500 gigawatts of renewable capacity in 2030 alone, more than all the renewables currently built in China. “Tripling is very ambitious,” says Altieri. “It’s not something that’s going to occur on its own.”

 

To achieve it, they found countries would need to increase the ambition of their current targets and support renewables in other ways, for instance by building more transmission and energy storage infrastructure. But this might not be such a tough sell.

The researchers found that 12 countries — including China, Brazil and Morocco — are already building renewables at a pace that would exceed their existing targets for 2030. And 22 countries, including the UK and Australia, have enough renewable energy capacity already in the pipeline to reach their existing target, suggesting more ambitious targets are in reach.

However, Altieri points out that to triple global capacity doesn’t mean tripling in every country – some would need to build more and some less. The places where most of the renewables needed to triple capacity will be built — China, the US, the EU and India — all could be moving faster.

Invisible efficiency

Energy efficiency is less visible than wind farms and solar arrays, but it is arguably the more important target for cutting emissions in the near term, making up half the emissions reduction needed between now and 2030. “Often the efficiency opportunity gets less emphasis than it deserves,” says James Newcomb at the Colorado-based energy think tank RMI.

He says that is in part because efficiency involves so many different aspects of the energy system, from improving home insulation to better public transportation. Newcomb says people also tend to have a bias towards fixing problems by adding, rather than subtracting things. “It’s just the way humans’ heads work.”

But the efficiency target is no less ambitious than tripling renewable energy capacity. The average annual rate of energy efficiency gain was 2 per cent in 2022. Doubling that would mean reaching a 4 per cent annual improvement in energy efficiency by 2030, a rate that countries have reached but not sustained in the past. “We think it’s definitely achievable and economically achievable,” says Newcomb. “But it will require this commitment to pay attention to it.”

Where will these invisible efficiency gains come from? A large portion — perhaps as much as 30 per cent — will be the result of switching to electric vehicles and appliances like heat pumps, which are inherently more efficient than their fossil fuel-powered counterparts, says Newcomb.

 

Other gains could come from using energy more efficiently in buildings. In high-income countries, this largely means retrofitting them to improve insulation and swap out appliances (the IEA has said a fifth of all buildings may need renovations to reach net-zero). In developing countries with lots of new construction, Newcomb says that means improving building standards and using materials like steel and cement more efficiently. Changes in behaviour, from improving recycling to using more public transportation, can also contribute to efficiency. Industry, from steelmaking to brewing beer, can also become more efficient.

“Plenty of options exist, and they lead to lower energy bills and improved energy security,” says Arnulf Grubler at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. “But market uptake of these options remains slow and needs to be accelerated via policy carrots and sticks.”

Grubler also points out that as demand for energy rises with growing and more affluent populations, the emissions reductions expected from building more renewables are contingent on improvements in efficiency. “Without stepped up investments in efficiency, demand growth more than compensates for all growth in renewables, and does not displace fossil fuels,” he says. In parallel with support for action on renewables and efficiency, a coalition of countries is pushing for an agreement at COP28 to include explicit language on phasing out fossil fuels.

There are other synergies between the two targets as well. By reducing peak energy demand, for instance, energy efficiency measures enable the grid to support a higher proportion of intermittent renewables. “It dramatically lowers the cost of energy transition if we do efficiency,” says Newcomb.

Sharing the wealth

While these global targets look ambitious and achievable, the picture is complicated in individual countries and regions. Low-income countries in the global south in particular have largely been excluded from the energy transition gaining momentum in high-income countries in the global north.

“The global tripling needs to come from everywhere,” says Altieri. “There’s a big part for the developing countries to play there.”

African countries, for instance, have only received around 2 per cent of total investment in renewable energy over the past decade, says Amos Wemanya at Power Shift Africa, an energy think tank in Kenya. He says past investment has been hampered by the extremely high cost of capital, such as very expensive loans, to develop projects there. “We have a continent that has abundant renewable energy resources, but it’s still also energy poor.”

The tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency targets at COP28 could help both reduce emissions and expand access to energy by including a commitment to “evenly and fairly” distribute those resources, says Wemanya. Parallel debates at the summit around reforming international development banks to lower the risk of clean energy investment in developing countries could also help more money flow to projects there.

In September, African leaders called for more financing to support a six-fold increase in renewable energy capacity on the continent ahead of COP28, which would take 10 times the investment Africa has seen so far. “Renewables are the way for the continent of Africa,” says Wemanya.