In an article on the Ember website, its chair, Baroness Bryony Worthington, reflects on the recent International Energy Agency ministerial and argues that in the interests of achieving global energy independence, access and affordability, the IEA should stay the course on clean energy and climate – not bow to recent US pressure.
All energy is equal but some sources are more equal than others
Last week at the biennial Ministerial Meeting of the International Energy Agency in Paris, the US, represented by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, threatened to leave the Agency and as a result appears to have successfully persuaded the body to drop climate change as one of its priorities.
Wright’s comments to the assembled plenary, and in his formal press conference statement, were deeply critical of the work of the IEA over the last five years, claiming that it had adopted an anti-energy stance, publishing scenarios that had lost touch with reality. As the largest global exporter of fossil fuels, the ‘reality’ the US wants the IEA to focus on is that fossil fuels still provide roughly 80% of our primary energy demand. And the next largest source of global energy is still biomass – wood and dung – that he believes should be replaced with gas.
But here’s the thing.
The reason why so many people still rely on traditional biomass (for roughly 5% of global energy) is because – despite having over a century to lift people out of poverty, provide higher living standards and drive economic growth equally around the globe – fossil fuels have failed. Could that be because relying on fossil fuels for human development is fundamentally flawed?
Most countries are not blessed with abundant fossil fuel reserves; instead, they are concentrated in the hands of a few countries. Even where they are found in developing countries, as in the case in Nigeria, the fossil fuel sector extracted the raw commodity, made all the necessary refinements and associated profits overseas, and then sold the useful energy back to the country at a high price. And the relatively few, geographically fortunate countries to have more reserves than they can use domestically, have long sought to control market prices and have enjoyed windfall profits arising from geopolitical instability. Investing in less profitable markets to increase energy access has not been the priority. And when it comes to natural gas, the key problem is the heavy infrastructure required to transport and store it – which is not cheap. Its penetration into lower-income countries has therefore been slow and patchy.
So biomass use persists even a quarter of the way through the 21st Century. And why? Because trees (and dung) are a cheap store of renewable energy that can be found pretty much everywhere.
But what if there was an energy alternative that had the same or superior qualities? Being very widely distributed and regenerating and affordable? Enter solar plus batteries.
This combination of technologies is an energy access success story and will reach the parts of energy access that fossil fuels have so far failed to. Both solar and batteries have fallen dramatically in price, thanks to mass manufacturing and rapid learning curves – so much so that there is no quicker or cheaper way to add energy capacity in the majority of places today. And the sun is abundant in the places people need energy access and installing infrastructure rather than having to continuously purchase fuels is now very attractive. As a result China’s export of solar panels to Africa already increased substantially last year and India has seen a huge growth in solar in recent years. More precise numbers on this will emerge as global energy reviews, from the IEA, Ember and others, appear later this year.
Also, electrons stored in batteries not only provide light, heat and work via motors – they propel vehicles. For countries lacking mature grid infrastructure this is frequently via drop-in batteries, which can be recharged offline and swapped out which is a more reliable way of storing power and recharging a vehicle. Wood couldn’t do this so countries had to buy expensive oil products – but batteries plus solar can.
And it is transport, not power generation that makes up the biggest energy-related cost, trade imbalance and source of insecurity for many less developed countries. Which is precisely why both China (and increasingly India) have focused as much of their attention on transport electrification as they have on their power sectors. And for China especially this is already bearing fruit as demand for oil products for road transport is expected to have dropped by around 3% last year. Imports of oil still rose by just under 1% but the vast majority of this was absorbed into strategic reserves. And in India, as the recent Ember briefing showed, the switch to electric vehicles is also happening and at a much earlier point in its development than in China.
Chris Wright, at the end of his press conference, acknowledged that cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels most likely don’t need scenarios to help them play an increasing role in the global energy sector, since they will ‘fly like eagles’ on their price (and efficiency) advantages alone. But presumably this is why the US (and fellow Petrostates) are working so hard to force the IEA to include scenarios that show a reversal in the rise of clean: in case the idea catches on that fossil fuels may start falling like stones. The game now is to slow down that inevitable clean transition and to hold on to a world where the fossil supply industry controls demand, not the other way around.
For the rest of the world that continues to view climate change as a risk multiplier and threat to human prosperity, cleaner energy futures offer multiple wins: in terms of energy security, abundance and affordability, a clean environment and a more stable climate. The IEA should always be evidence-based and treat all energy sources as equal. In reality, however, some energy sources are more equal than others – and that’s why they will win. How fast is a function of multiple factors, and we should resist the US’s current efforts to slow the process down.
External link
Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 