2024-02-13 15:47:08
Published on: 02/13/2024 – 4:47 p.m. Modified on: 02/13/2024 – 4:45 p.m.
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Faced with global warming which “is happening” at the moment, the world of energy is still too much in “business as usual” and must evolve towards more “innovation”, urged the envoy of the American climate president, John Kerry, during the 50th anniversary of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
“It is time for diplomats and environment ministers to step aside before energy ministers, industry and researchers” to advance the fight once morest global warming, added the Irish Minister of Climate and Environment Eamon Ryan.
Mr. Ryan is co-chairing this first high-level international meeting since COP28 in Dubai in December, where the world agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), which emit greenhouse gases and are responsible for global warming.
“We need to deploy existing, profitable technologies as quickly as possible,” particularly in renewables, and “we need to bring new technologies to market faster than we are doing now,” said Mr. Kerry.
He was referring in particular to technologies, not all proven, making it possible to save or use energy more efficiently, to capture CO2, store electricity or produce hydrogen.
“Why? because this year it’s hotter than last year, and next year it will be hotter than this year. It’s happening and it’s guaranteed” by science, he said in front of an audience of Energy and Climate Ministers brought together by the IEA.
“Even though there has been a huge increase in clean energies such as wind and solar, this is not enough to achieve the objectives set for 2050,” added IEA director Fatih Birol. “We need to support technologies that are not yet on the market” and the industry that produces them, he stressed.
Mr. Birol also called on governments to invest in innovation.
According to the IEA, the “clean energy” industry represents a market that will amount to 1,000 billion dollars within ten years.
“No longer a single coal-fired power station”
“Knowing what we know and knowing the reality of climate change, there should not be a single coal-fired power plant releasing CO2 into the atmosphere in operation in the world today,” said John Kerry.
However, “the equivalent of 500 gigawatts of electricity production capacity in coal-fired power plants must be implemented in the coming years in Asia”, mainly in South-East Asia.
Which will “cancel” everything “that has been done in Europe and the United States for 15 years to reduce CO2 emissions”, according to him.
Mr. Kerry praised the action of China, which is currently building “more renewable energy capacity than the entire world combined.”
To develop alternative energies to fossil fuels, global investments (public and private) will have to amount to 4,500 billion dollars per year by 2030, according to the IEA, including “at least 2,200 billion per year in emerging countries and in development.
According to the IEA, bosses of large energy groups and members of civil society were invited to the discussions. The action-climate network which brings together 1,900 NGOs from 130 countries, sitting as an observer at the COP, nevertheless protested not being able to attend.
The IEA, an intergovernmental organization attached to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), made up of countries mostly oil importers, was created in the midst of the oil crisis in the 1970s to organize supplies.
The meeting is due to end on Wednesday with a communiqué setting out the IEA’s mandate “for the next two years”.
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