Confronting our new climate reality
For a hot minute, it looked like the Doomers might be proved wrong.
In recent years, the rapid deployment of renewable energy and a shift away from the dirtiest fossil fuels have given even grizzled climate activists cause for some measure of hope.
The most extreme projections about temperature rise on planet Earth were replaced by less apocalyptic forecasts, and while the world wasn’t shifting away from fossil fuels nearly fast enough, there appeared to be a realistic pathway to significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the decades ahead.
Yet now, at the very moment the world seems to be making real progress in the fight against global warming, the scale of the problem seems to be getting even bigger.
Electricity demand is spiking, thanks to artificial intelligence and a new generation of energy-hungry data centers. Overall energy consumption keeps climbing as a new middle class rises in the developing world. And a large-scale phaseout of planet-warming emissions is being hampered by short-term politics, global conflict and ossified financial markets.
These are just some of the themes being discussed Wednesday at the Climate Forward conference hosted by the New York Times. Interviewees will include primatologist Jane Goodall, Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Michael Regan and more.
By 2050, global demand for electricity is expected to rise by as much as 75%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Much of that demand will come from rapidly developing nations in Africa and Southeast Asia. But even in the U.S., energy consumption is soaring after remaining relatively flat for 15 years.
“Everyone is assuming that wealthy countries will taper their energy demand on a certain timeline,” said Raj Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, a nonprofit group that is working on expanding clean energy access in poor countries. “But that assumption will be blown out of the water by whatever the next new waves of technology are.”
Energy use is skyrocketing should come as no surprise. Since before the industrial revolution, human progress has meant using more energy. Global transportation, heavy industry, mass production and the computing revolution have all raised living standards around the world but also required huge amounts of power. The next waves of technological progress – including AI and even more global travel – will only compound the need for energy.
It’s true that a growing share of the world’s power will come from clean sources, including solar panels and wind turbines. Last year alone, nearly 86% of the new power generation built worldwide came from clean sources, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.
But with the global population expected to rise by as much as 1.7 billion in the next 25 years and overall energy demand rising in tandem, the gains in solar and wind may not be enough to rapidly displace dirty forms of power such as oil, gas and coal. Rather than taking the place of fossil fuels, renewable energy sources are simply helping meet the additional demand.
Both the production and the use of oil and gas are still booming worldwide, and planet-warming emissions are still on the rise.
Major economies such as India and China continue to build new coal plants. The U.S. is currently the world’s biggest supplier of natural gas and is constructing new gas power plants; the U.S. is also producing record amounts of oil. And countries in the Middle East are proceeding with plans to pump oil for many decades to come.
What’s more, while there are promising emissions-free alternatives to electricity generation, progress is slower in identifying viable replacements for things like aviation fuel, shipping fuel, concrete, plastics and more.
“Despite all the noble efforts, emissions set new records every year,” said Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines, itself a major polluter. “The amount of coal burned on the planet, probably the dirtiest form of emissions, goes up every year.”
Energy Transition
The perils of these choices and a warming planet are already clear. Global average temperatures have been 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than preindustrial levels for most of the past year, exceeding a threshold that scientists had long warned of crossing. The result: Last year was the hottest on record, with withering heat waves, deadly droughts and extreme weather globally.
“The catastrophic effects of climate change are visiting us,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund. “They’re killing people. It’s a grave situation.”
As long as fossil fuel emissions persist at scale, temperatures will keep rising, and the heat and violent weather will keep getting worse. On the flip side, the faster the world builds more clean power to replace fossil fuels, the sooner the planet will stop heating up.
Those simple truths make plain the global stakes of the energy transition. And with most of the new energy demand expected to come from the developing world, it is in some of the poorest countries on Earth that the battle to keep global warming at bay will be won or lost.
If the next billion people to gain access to reliable electricity in Africa and Asia get it from diesel generators and natural gas plants, emissions from those regions will likely keep rising for many decades to come – and that will warm the planet as a whole.
But if the developing world’s surging appetite for electricity can be met with distributed, renewable power plants – such as small-scale solar arrays and modest wind farms – the world might be spared that additional warming.
“Whether all that power is supplied by renewables or coal is something that will affect every human being on this planet,” Shah said.
A large-scale shift to renewables in the developing world would mark a major change in how power is produced and distributed. For the past 100 years, most electricity has been generated at large power plants and sent out through a network of transmission lines.
But the sudden changes in technology and economics are producing an overnight revolution that is upending that model. Inexpensive solar panels are making it possible for communities in Pakistan, South Africa and beyond to quickly start powering small homes and commercial operations with reliable, affordable electricity.
“The real energy transition will rely on local, decentralized power systems,” said Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, an environmental activist and geographer from Chad. “We can build local smart grids, free of fossil fuel, working with communities to have them produce their own energy.”
Beyond producing fewer planet-warming emissions, the creation of small-scale renewable energy can help raise living standards, too. “It can enable women, rural populations, and increase their revenues, and also create jobs for youth,” said Ibrahim.
Yet even as prices of solar panels fall, it remains maddeningly difficult for many countries in the developing world to access the cost-competitive capital needed for larger clean energy projects, which will still play a role in powering big countries with massive economies, including Kenya, India, Pakistan and Nigeria.
Loans for renewable projects in the developing world are often charged higher interest rates than loans for fossil fuel projects. The World Bank and other multilateral organizations are working to make such loans more affordable, and the issue is expected to be a main topic at the U.N. climate summit in Azerbaijan in November.
But for now, many poor countries that need more reliable energy remain saddled with crippling debt that makes it hard to invest in upgraded infrastructure.
“Financing is lagging, and bankability is lagging, and all these countries are facing the post-COVID global inflationary shock, a kind of hangover that it means that no one is able to invest, and the countries are broke,” said James Mwangi, a clean energy entrepreneur from Kenya. “So instead of flying into these new technologies, there’s just no liquidity to invest in them, and you end up with energy poverty and slow adoption.”
Economic Pressures
The financial challenges are not just in the developing world. Economics remain an impediment to large-scale change in the United States, too.
Surging global demand for energy has made the U.S. the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and pressures to keep domestic energy prices low have led to record oil production. Investors discourage large energy companies from investing in renewable projects. As a result, oil and gas corporations are seeing record profits and investing almost no capital into renewables.
And with interest rates high over the past two years, it has become exceedingly difficult to build some well-established clean power projects, especially offshore wind.
Given all that, some utilities across the U.S. are backtracking on their plans to go green. Duke Energy, a major power producer in the South, recently walked back from aggressive plans to cut its emissions and instead proposed a major new investment in natural gas generation.
Other major corporations are also retreating from their most ambitious climate pledges. And with the electric vehicle market softening, automakers are delaying their efforts to transition production away from gasoline vehicles.
“People are not willing to give up energy,” said Kirby of United Airlines. “And it’s increasingly clear that people are not willing to pay more for clean energy.”
Government incentives, including the Inflation Reduction Act, have spurred a new round of investments in renewable energy and battery projects. The tax credits included in that law, the biggest ever federal investment to combat climate change, have helped create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and spark a domestic manufacturing boom.
But even with those gains, it remains difficult to get big new clean power plants online, in large measure because the U.S. grid is antiquated and underdeveloped.
“There’s this belief that we can do utility-scale renewables, and that’s going to solve this problem,” said Patty Cook, an executive at ICF, a global energy consultancy. “But there aren’t enough transmission lines to serve that demand.”
And while many corporate executives say they would welcome a carbon tax, politicians in the U.S. have been steadfastly opposed to the idea. Economists say such a tax would be an effective way to spur a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, but elected officials have shunned the idea, fearing it would raise energy costs and hurt their chances of reelection.
“Everyone wants clean, affordable, reliable energy,” Cook said. “That’s the holy grail. But it’s really difficult to get all three.”
Demand for Electricity
While there is no doubt that the global population is soaring, energy use is spiking, and fossil fuels are sticking around, some energy analysts still predict a potentially bright future. Indeed, they believe that many of the projections are simply inaccurate.
“Forecasts show continued emissions that are not necessarily consistent with climate goals,” said Mark Dyson, managing director at RMI, a nonprofit group that works with companies to reduce their emissions. “But forecasts change.”
Dyson, who studies long-term energy demand, said that for decades, officials have overestimated energy demand and underestimated the growth of renewables and gains in efficiency.
Indeed, in the projections for soaring electricity demand, Dyson sees signs of progress. That’s exactly what’s to be expected as electric vehicles replace gasoline-powered cars and electric heating replaces oil and gas heating.
“Electricity demand is a feature, not a bug, of the clean energy transition and the pathway for meeting our climate goals,” he said. “Powering more of our economy with electricity, rather than fossil fuels, may get easier in the years ahead.” With the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates, the cost of capital should fall, making some clean energy projects more affordable.
Data centers, while energy hogs, are getting more efficient, as are electric vehicles, new buildings and many other electrified staples of modern life. A flurry of innovation is underway that could soon provide new, affordable ways to reduce emissions, produce energy and power society.
There are even promising signs in some parts of the developed world, namely Europe. The European Union’s overall carbon emissions fell by 5% last year. And while the EU faces many of the same challenges hampering the U.S.’ rapid adoption of clean power, it also has a powerful incentive spurring reform: a tax on carbon.
“We’re not standing still anymore,” said Krupp of the EDF. “We’ve already begun to move forward.”
Moving forward may well mean advances in the deployment of clean power. It may mean rapid gains in the efficiency of everything from cars to data centers. It may even mean breakthroughs in new forms of power, such as fusion or small-scale nuclear.
But as the catastrophic effects of climate change continue to mount, human ingenuity will have to do much more than get better at delivering energy. It will also have to help humans adapt to life on a hotter planet.
We will need new technologies to manage an atmosphere dense with long-lasting emissions, new solutions to protect vulnerable populations from rising seas, and new strategies for helping nature flourish and agriculture thrive.
“We should not think that we are passive victims of forecasts,” Dyson said. “We actually have agency, we have the tools, and the tools get better every year.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.