Clean energy progress “falling well short” says IEA

• 9 years ago (2015-05-08)
• Junior Isles

North America 1021

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The International Energy Agency has published its Energy Technology Perspectives 2015 (ETP 2015). The report shows that despite a few recent success stories, clean energy progress is falling well short of the levels needed to limit the global increase in temperatures to no more than 2°C.

The report also stresses that it will be challenging for the world to meet its climate goals solely through the UN negotiation process that is expected to yield an agreement this December in Paris. This, says the report, leaves the development and deployment of new groundbreaking energy technologies as key to mobilising climate action, and urges policymakers to step up efforts to support them.

ETP 2015 provides a comprehensive analysis of long-term trends in the energy sector, centred on the technologies and the level of deployment needed for a more environmentally sustainable, secure, and affordable energy system.

Notably, it includes the annual Tracking Clean Energy Progress report, which for the first time looks at progress in storage and hydrogen technology.

Like all IEA publications, ETP 2015 does not make long-term forecasts. Instead, it is built around economic modelling scenarios – each of which shows what mix of energy technologies would need to be deployed to obtain a specific climate outcome. The main scenario of ETP 2015 – the 2-Degree Scenario, or 2DS – illustrates a transformed global energy system in which cumulative carbon emissions from fossil fuels are reduced by 40 per cent relative to the “business-as-usual” scenario, or 6DS.