Renewable production not keeping pace with new demand

The amount of additional electricity required worldwide is more than any existing increase in output from renewables. As value-for-money fossil fuels – coal and gas mostly – fill the breach as it were, ‘decarbonisation’ is in effect going negative (if it was ever doing anything else). Let COP26 delegates chew on such ‘challenges’ as they’re called, in Glasgow later this year.
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The planet’s electricity demand is expected to rebound strongly this year and next after falling by around 1% in 2020, according to a new publication from the International Energy Agency.

Released on Thursday, the IEA’s electricity market report predicts that global demand for electricity will increase by nearly 5% in 2021 and 4% in 2022 as economies around the world seek to recover from effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, says France24.

The report from the Paris-based organization notes that although electricity production from renewable energies “continues to grow strongly” – it is expected to increase by 8% this year and more than 6% in 2022 – it does not, cannot meet the growing demand.

The IEA said that renewables “should only be able to serve about half of the projected growth in global demand in 2021 and 2022”. At the other end of the spectrum, electricity production from fossil fuels was to “cover 45% of the additional demand in 2021 and 40% in 2022”.

When it comes to carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector, the IEA report predicts an increase of 3.5% this year and 2.5% in 2022.

Overall, fossil fuels remain dominant in electricity generation. Last year, coal was responsible for 34% of global production, while gas accounted for 25%, the IEA said. Renewable energies and nuclear combined to take a 37% share.

“Renewable energy is experiencing impressive growth in many parts of the world, but it is still not where it needs to be to put us on the path to achieving net zero emissions by mid-century,” Keisuke Sadamori, director of energy for IEA markets and security, said in a statement.

“As the economy rebounds from the pandemic, we have seen an increase in the generation of electricity from fossil fuels,” Sadamori added. “To move to a sustainable path, we need to massively increase investments in clean energy technologies, especially renewables and energy efficiency. “

Continued here.