By: ICN Bureau
Last updated : October 23, 2022 8:37 am
With record deployment of renewables and EVs, the CO2 intensity of the world’s energy supply is improving again after worsening in 2021 when the economy rebounded sharply
The International Energy Agency (IEA) in its latest analysis has predicted that the carbon dioxide emissions levels in 2022 will only see a fraction of growth as compared to last year when it worsened. The global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion are expected to grow by just under 1% this year.
New IEA analysis of the latest data from around the world shows that these CO2 emissions are on course to increase by close to 300 million tonnes in 2022 to 33.8 billion tonnes – a far smaller rise than their jump of nearly 2 billion tonnes in 2021, which resulted from the rapid global recovery from the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic. This year’s increase is driven by power generation and by the aviation sector, as air travel rebounds from pandemic lows.
“The global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a scramble by many countries to use other energy sources to replace the natural gas supplies that Russia has withheld from the market. The encouraging news is that solar and wind are filling much of the gap, with the uptick in coal appearing to be relatively small and temporary,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “This means that CO2 emissions are growing far less quickly this year than some people feared – and that policy actions by governments are driving real structural changes in the energy economy. Those changes are set to accelerate thanks to the major clean energy policy plans that have advanced around the world in recent months.”
The European Union’s CO2 emissions are on course to decline this year despite an increase in coal emissions. The rise in European coal use is expected to be temporary, with a strong pipeline of new renewable projects forecast to add around 50 gigawatts of capacity in 2023. These additions would generate more electricity than the expected increase in coal-fired power generation in the EU in 2022. In China, CO2 emissions are set to remain broadly flat this year, reflecting the mixture of different forces at work, including weaker economic growth, the impacts of drought on hydropower, and major deployments of solar and wind.
As well as the challenges for hydropower in some regions, the world’s low-emissions electricity supply has suffered a setback from a series of nuclear power plant outages, which are set to reduce global nuclear power production by over 80 TWh. This has largely been due to more than half of France’s fleet of nuclear reactors being offline for part of the year. The drop in nuclear power generation globally has contributed to an increased use of coal and oil for electricity generation. The world’s use of natural gas is expected to decline following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, resulting in a decrease in CO2 emissions of around 40 million tonnes in 2022.
Demand for oil is set to grow more than for any other fossil fuel in 2022, with oil-related CO2 emissions up by around 180 million tonnes. This has been driven largely by the transport sector as travel restrictions have been lifted and pre-pandemic commuting and travel patterns have resumed. Aviation is expected to contribute around three-quarters of the rise in emissions from oil use, notably due to increases in international air travel. However, the aviation sector’s emissions are still only around 80% of their pre-pandemic levels.
Uncertainty in global natural gas markets will continue to shape many key energy trends for the rest of this year and in 2023. However, promising signs of lasting structural changes to the CO2 intensity of global energy are evident in 2022 – and they are set to be reinforced by major increases in government support for clean energy investment, notably in the US Inflation Reduction Act, as well as in decarbonisation plans such as the European Union’s Fit for 55 package and Japan’s Green Transformation (GX) plan, and in ambitious clean energy targets in China and India.
The effects of recent policies on energy security and global emissions trends will be explored in depth by the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2022, which will be released on 27 October.