Pictures of the Future      Spring 2008

Why Renewable Energy is Needed

Economic development and population growth in many emerging markets are causing the global demand for energy to increase rapidly. In the World Energy Outlook from 2007, the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast that global consumption of energy will rise by over 50 % by 2030 if current policies are maintained. China and India alone will be responsible for half the increase. Fossil fuels will continue to be the key source of primary energy, and will be responsible for 84 % of the increase in consumption between 2005 and 2030. Above all, coal will experience a boom. Today, China and India consume 45 % of all coal used globally; by 2030, this figure is likely to reach over 80 %.

^{Data is based on the International Energy Agency’s "Business as usual" scenario. Clear political and technical measures are necessary to reduce CO₂ emissions
Source: IEA 2007. 1 Mtoe = 1 million tons oil equivalent = 41.868 PJ}

Based on these predicted increases, CO₂ emissions will reach double the 1990 level by 2030 (graphic above and Pictures of the Future, Spring 2007, "The Sources of Greenhouse Gases"). To ensure that greenhouse gas emissions will fall despite these developments, 187 countries agreed on the key points of a new climate protection agreement at the World Climate Conference in Bali in December 2007. The agreement should be ready for signing at a conference in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 and become legally binding by 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires. At Kyoto, the industrial nations committed themselves to cutting their greenhouse gases by an average of 5 % by 2012 compared with 1990. The new agreement should provide for a reduction of 25 to 40 % by 2020. To achieve this goal, the industrial countries are to provide more climate-friendly and energy-efficient technology to developing countries.

Environmental engineering continues to grow. According to the German development organization GTZ, $71 billion was invested in renewable energy in 2006. That was 43 % more than the equivalent figure for 2005. Of that sum, $15 billion was accounted for by developing and emerging markets.

In the future, the use of regenerative energy will ­expand—particularly in countries such as China, India, and Brazil. A 2007 GTZ TERNA country study reports that a good 80 % of all power generated in China is ­produced by fossil plants, most of which run on hard coal. Hydroelectricity contributes between 15 and 18 %, nuclear energy about 1 %, and wind energy much less.

According to the China’s 11th five-year plan, this situation is expected to change as follows: by 2010, natural gas, water, wind, and nuclear energy should collectively account for 38 % of the country’s energy production. By 2020, 20 %—290 GW—should be produced by water alone; today, the equivalent figure is 128 GW. At 676 GW, China’s hydropower potential is greater than that of any other country.

Wind power, which also enjoys considerable potential, is to be boosted from 1 GW to 30 GW between the end of 2005 and 2020. The photovoltaic market is also growing—by the end of 2006, it had reached 65 MW, around half of which powers households in outlying regions. By 2020, some 1.8 GW is expected to be installed in the form of photovoltaic generators. Frost & Sullivan anticipates that sales in the regenerative energy market will increase from $6.9 billion in 2006 to $17.9 billion in 2013. Aside from tax breaks and sponsorship, Beijing has introduced other economic incentives to promote renewable energy. "By 2013, photovoltaics will probably even outpace wind power to become the fastest-growing energy source in China," says Frost & Sullivan research analyst Linda Yan.

Another way of generating power in a climate-friendly manner involves technologies for efficiently separating CO₂. These include coal gasification, combustion with pure oxygen and CO₂ separation from flue-gas. Although many pilot projects along these lines already exist (see "CO₂ Separation" and "CO₂ Sequestration"), there is still some way to go before these technologies can become widely used. According to a forecast made by the IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in 2005, the energy produced by all of the plants using CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) technologies will still account for less than 3 % of the energy generated worldwide by 2020.

From 2000 to 2030, the cost of CCS systems is expected to drop by half from between $50 to $100 per ton of CO₂ to between $25 to $50. As a result, the IEA believes that the proportion of CCS plants could rise to 20 % by 2030 and to 37 % by 2050. In this case, the CO₂ emissions resulting from worldwide power generation could be reduced by up to 18 gigatons by 2050. And that would represent an important contribution to achieving the Bali targets.
                                                                                                             Sylvia Trage