Summary

Over the years, energy conversion technologies have played different roles in the development of the global power sector. Coal-fired and hydropower generation could be considered the “parents” of electrification, as the first few power stations commissioned worldwide belonged to either of these technologies. However, they are very different from each other in nature. Hydropower dams, as found in Publication I, can be continuously maintained and operated for over a century, unlike coal-fired boilers or any

other technology. Coal-fired generation technologies have evolved significantly from their early versions to their current state, greatly increasing in capacity and significantly improving in efficiency. While both technologies have been often sought after because of their historical low cost, their environmental impacts and the introduction of new technologies have resulted in a reduction in their influence in the energy sector over the years.

Nuclear energy, introduced first in the late 1950s, still plays a major role in the global energy sector. However, the share of nuclear power plants of the global capacities has been in decline since the late 1980s after a few well-known nuclear disasters. Currently, competing with low-cost renewables and unsolved environmental challenges have kept the share of the nuclear capacities in decline over the past 30 years, with many reactors reaching quite soon the end of their operational lifetimes, as found in Publications I and II.

Gas-fired capacities have, in contrast to nuclear, experienced a noticeable growth over the past 30 years. The low CO2 emissions in comparison with coal-fired generation, together with the low cost of fuel and versatility have facilitated the increase in commissioning. Similarly, solar PV and wind have been on an exponential growth curve since their introduction in the 2000s and late 1980s respectively. Renewables, in general, have been strongly on the rise over the past couple of decades, in accordance with the increased awareness of climate change and its link to carbon emissions. This includes bio-energy generation, which has also increased substantially over the past couple decades.

Oil-fired generation has experienced a continuous decline in generation for some years, and its share in the global capacities is decreasing faster than any of the other fossil-fuelled technologies. This may be the result of the high volatility of the market price of oil, the increasing cost of extraction from deeper or overall less accessible resources, and years of spills and environmental disasters, such as Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Nevertheless, the road to a carbon neutral global energy system continues to be uphill.

The continuous use of fossil fuels beyond the Paris Agreements points out at the need of developing new policies to accelerate the transition to renewables.

Publications I and II present a detailed analysis of the global power generation and the technological deployment at high resolution. The geographical and technological trends are presented in detail and datasets are generated for use in the subsequent publications.

4 Energy-intensive industries

In the previous chapter, the trends of installation and operation of different technologies were discussed, along with some of the factors that influenced those trends. Another factor that is likely to affect the shape of the global energy sector and that has not been discussed before is the way and purpose for which the energy is consumed. After all, in order to reduce emissions enough to meet the targets of the IPCC 1.5°C (2018) report, not only the power sector has to change, but also many other human activities.

According to the IPCC (2014) report, the energy sector is responsible for the largest share, roughly 35%, of the global CO2eq emissions. Agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) are responsible for further 24% (of which agriculture alone is responsible for 12.2%), the industrial sector 21% and transport 14% of the emissions. Together, these four sectors account for 94% of the global emissions (IPCC, 2014). This speaks to the point that changes elsewhere than in the energy sector are absolutely needed in order to adequately reduce the global level of emissions.

Therefore, this chapter aims to briefly expand on the role of other main contributors to CO2eq emissions, which may also influence the energy sector globally.

4.1

As presented by the IPCC (2014), the transport sector is responsible for the fourth largest share of the global emissions, roughly 14% of the total in 2014. Within the transport sector, the largest emitters are road transport (72%), international shipping (9.3%) and aviation (6.5%), adding up to 87.8% of the total emissions from the transport sector. Road transport, the largest share within the transport sector, owes its large emissions to the tight relationship between road transport and fossil oil.

However, the transport–fossil oil link is starting to weaken. The “Tesla” phenomenon has brought electric vehicles to the trend, and governments around the world have been implementing a range of incentives and subsidies to promote the penetration of hybrid and electric vehicles worldwide over the current decade, with different degrees of success (Münzen et al., 2019, Wang et al., 2019).

One of the reasons why governments around the globe are trying to facilitate a rapid increase in the share of electric vehicles is the impact of fossil-fuelled cars on the local environment of local densely populated areas, beyond the impact of those emissions at a global level (Siskova and van den Bergh, 2019).

Although the electrification of the transport sector is a trend under analysis at a global level, some major global cities are already achieving quite low-carbon urban transport (Li et al., 2019). Furthermore, and particularly on a global scale, it is relevant to mention that a significant reduction in the emissions from the transport sector require both the electrification of transport and a renewable-based energy sector to power the transport

sector (Woo et al., 2017). In other words, electrification of transport does not greatly reduce the transport sector emissions if the power sector behind them depends heavily on fossil fuels, such as coal (Woo et al., 2017).

The electric car stock has expanded by a factor of around 12 from 2013 to 2018, and several countries have committed to reach 30% of their transport fleet to be electric by 2030 (IEA, 2019b). Moreover, the IEA (2019b) predicts that electrification of the transport sector will further benefit a transition towards renewables.