IEA: Global Progress on Clean Energy Has Stalled, New Policies Needed

Global progress towards low-carbon energy has stalled, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

In Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2013, the agency's input to the 4^th Clean Energy Ministerial conference, IEA asserts that despite some advances in renewable energy and developing world energy policies, the global energy supply is not getting cleaner.  For the majority of technologies capable of contributing significantly to reducing emissions, progress is “alarmingly slow”.

The IEA report covers all forms of power generation technology, several energy and power intensive end-use sectors, and carbon capture and storage technology. It highlights bright spots, areas in need of improvement, and policy issues preventing necessary progress. It concludes with a suite of policy recommendations to unlock clean energy innovation and accelerate the global transition towards a high-energy, low-carbon economy. 

Bright Spots

Though the picture it presents is bleak on the whole, Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2013 does highlight some bright spots. Despite a turbulent economic environment and debilitating policy uncertainty, renewable electricity penetration continued a historic increase. In 2012 alone, installed solar power capacity grew by 42%, and wind power grew by 19% over the same period.

Total investment in renewables fell from 2011 levels, but it remained relatively high.

Additionally, investment in renewable energy expanded across the globe, in particular in developing countries with emerging economies. China improved its renewable energy policies, ratcheting up its ambition and raising its deployment targets. Rising deployment, industry consolidation, and increased competition drove down the costs of renewable technologies, enabling further expansion and greater competitiveness against incumbents.

Finally, the IEA sees a “window of opportunity” opening in the transit sector. 2012 hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) sales were up 43% over 2011 figures, for a total of over 1.2 million vehicles sold. Electric vehicle (EV) sales more than doubled to over 100,00 vehicles. Countries implementing automotive fuel economy standards  saw surprisingly rapid success, suggesting that other countries might be able to follow their lead to good effect.

Grim Messages

Though 2012 saw some bright spots, the IEA’s overall message is bleak. Despite having the power to create policies and market conditions that advance clean energy technologies, governments are failing to do so at a pace commensurate with the scale of the decarbonization challenge. As a result, the global community is not on track to meet the IEA’s interim 2020 targets for an energy system consistent with restricting global warming to 2 degrees C.

According to the report, we are not making sufficient progress in most clean technology classes, primarily because governments are not pursuing the policy measures necessary to facilitate such progress. Nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, biofuels, and buildings are all moving too slowly on the key metrics that the IEA uses to assess progress: technology penetration, market creation, and technology development. A combination of weak policy and policy uncertainty are restraining investor confidence, and deployment and innovation are suffering as a result.

Moreover, progress on critical system integration technologies such as smart grids, co-generation, and district heating and cooling is moving slower than needed. Again, a combination of market barriers and weak or uncertain policies is preventing necessary progress, highlighting the need for a more robust and strategic policy approach focused on both immediate results and long-term system transformation.

Perhaps the grimmest message of all concerns coal, the most carbon-intensive fuel for electric power generation. Growth of coal fired power is growing fast: between 2000 and 2010, coal power generation increased by 45%, far exceeding the 25% growth in non-carbon power over the same period.

Worse yet, most of this growth in coal demand has been met by new subcritical or supercritical coal plants, which are more carbon intensive than their more advanced ultra-supercritical counterparts. Worst of all are IEA's projections of coal demand, which IEA expects will continue growing rapidly from roughly 150 EJ today to around 180 EJ in 2017. Such growth would put coal generation 17% above the level consistent with IEA’s 2 degree energy system scenario, and above even the IEA’s 6 degree scenario.

Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2013 final criticism is directed towards our collective efforts to accumulate and analyze energy data. The report argues that efforts to assess progress and build solutions are being hampered by a dearth of useful, high quality data, in particular from the developing world. More and better data is needed to fully understand the state of the global energy system and the pace and nature of the transitions underway.

Messages for Policy Makers

The authors of Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2013 identify policy uncertainty and unambitious policy approaches as critical barriers to the development and widespread deployment of advanced clean energy technologies. To accelerate the pace of energy system transition, they suggest a variety of sectoral approaches across the suite of individual technologies and enabling system technologies analyzed in the report. Most of the recommendations combine measures to accelerate technology penetration, market creation, and technology development.

On the latter point, the report goes into significant detail about the nature of energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D), and the role of governments in driving these processes. Most notably, the IEA concludes that governments should triple global energy RDD&D spending, echoing a strong view amongst scholars and analysts that considerably greater energy RDD&D spending is a prerequisite for effective decarbonization.

Additionally, the report argues that governments should facilitate the emergence of ‘disruptive’ technologies, invest more in cross-cutting areas such as materials and nanotechnology, expand international RDD&D collaborations, phase out subsidies for fossil fuels, vigorously pursue no-regrets energy efficiency policies, create policy environments marked by certainty and long-term strategic thinking, and implement better programs for collective high quality, high volume energy and infrastructure data.

On the whole, Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2013 is both a scathing indictment of clean energy efforts to date and a call to arms for a more ambitious approach. The IEA’s strategy is not newâ€"it's been called for for years by The Brookings Institution, The Breakthrough Institute, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, The American Energy Innovation Council, and othersâ€"but the level of detail offered adds strength to its evidence base. Perhaps most importantly, the fact that it’s written by IEA, a global authority, and offered by IEA Director Maria van der Hoeven directly to policy makers improves its prospects for implementation.  

The parties to the Clean Energy Ministerialâ€"23 high emitters collectively responsible for 80 percent of global emissions and 90 percent of global clean energy investmentâ€"now have their work laid out for them. It’s time they get started on it.