- Matt Magrath
- Environment Correspondent – BBC News
The report showed that 12% of global electricity production last year was from wind and solar energy
The world will reduce the use of fossil fuels to produce electricity this year, a new report says, in a “turning point” toward greener energy for the planet. It would be the first-ever annual decline in the use of coal, oil and gas to generate electricity.
As a result, greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced during energy production.
Experts attribute the expected change to a boom in renewable energy, mainly led by China.
The report showed that 12% of global electricity production in 2022 was through wind and solar energy, as enough wind turbines were added to generate electricity to operate almost all parts of the United Kingdom.
The study, conducted by the independent research organization Ember on Climate and Energy Affairs, considered that renewable energy sources (wind and solar energy) are likely to meet the increase in global demand for electricity this year.
Electricity production is the world’s largest source of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emissions related to the energy sector in 2021.
The phase-out of coal, oil and gas in the energy sector is seen as critical in helping the world avoid dangerous levels of climate change.
The Ember study examined data from several countries representing 93% of global electricity demand.
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Solar energy worldwide will grow by 24% in 2022, enough to meet the annual needs of a large country like South Africa.
The fourth edition of the Ember Global Electricity Review showed that significant progress is now being made in reducing the role of fossil fuels in energy production.
The study report concluded that the main developments are the continuous rise in reliance on solar energy and wind energy as economically viable sources of electricity generation. Solar energy worldwide grew by 24% last year, which is enough to meet the annual needs of a large country like South Africa.
The report added that renewable energy sources and nuclear energy accounted for 39% of global electricity production for the year 2022, indicating that the electricity that was produced last year was, in fact, the cleanest ever.
Despite all these findings, the report says that carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector continued to rise globally as a result of the increased use of coal in electricity generation, for which global demand has increased and is not produced from clean energy sources.
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China accounted for 40% of the world’s new solar panels last year
In 2022, nuclear energy and hydroelectric power faced problems and crises, with many nuclear reactors in France not connected to the Internet, and the water level of rivers in Europe dropping significantly in different regions.
The report says that in the current year 2023, the growth of wind and solar energy will be greater than the increase in global demand for electricity.
“When you stop using more fossil fuels to generate electricity, you will start to see greenhouse gas emissions drop,” said lead authors of the report Malgorzata and Yatros Motica.
“This is very important in the case of electric charging going up, as we have more electric cars, more heat pumps, so cleaning up the power sector will lead to lower emissions in other sectors as well,” Motika added.
While the decline in fossil fuel emissions in electricity generation this year is expected to be small, or regarding 0.3%, the study authors believe that it will continue at an accelerated rate in the coming years.
The report attributes this to a slight decrease in the use of gas last year, as some countries, such as Brazil, witnessed an increase in reliance on hydropower, which reduced their use of gas by 46% in 2022.
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Experts say reducing the use of fossil fuels in power generation might be a “tipping point” towards green energy
Dave Jones, one of the report’s co-authors at Ember, said: “We’ve now reached the next tipping point which is we start to see a new era of low fossil fuel emissions in the energy sector. We know that wind and solar are the answer, and we just have to move forward with the roadmap to build them as quickly as possible.
China plays an important and influential role in the global trend of energy use. About 50% of the global increase in wind energy came from China, and regarding 40% of the new solar energy in the world came from the country, which is also the largest user of coal energy in the world.
“There’s a chance that at the rate at which China builds wind power, solar power and all kinds of clean power generators, it will hit that peak coal generation before 2025, which is going to be very significant,” Jones added.
Energy experts acknowledge that curbing the use of fossil fuels in power generation might be a “tipping point”, but much remains to be done before that.
Professor Jessica Jewell of the University of Bergen, who was not involved in the study, said the first peak of coal power generation in the UK was in 1979.
“However, it took decades to phase out coal power completely, for example, the UK is still using very little coal in 2022, 43 years following the peak, so in order to reach clean energy targets, We don’t have 40 or even 30 years, we need to decarbonise and reduce emissions from the entire electricity sector in a much shorter time.”