Jessica Jewell

Energy Pathways for Sustainable Development

Chapter 17 explores possible transformational pathways of the future global energy system with the overarching aim of assessing the technological feasibility as well as the economic implications of meeting a range of sustainability objectives simultaneously. As such, it aims at the integration across objectives, and thus goes beyond earlier assessments of the future energy system that have mostly focused on either specific topics or single objectives.

Energy and security

Executive Summary Uninterrupted provision of vital energy services (see Chapter 1, Section 1.2.2) – energy security – is a high priority of every nation. Energy security concerns are a key driving force of energy policy. These concerns relate to the robustness (sufficiency of resources, reliability of infrastructure, and stable and affordable prices); sovereignty (protection from potential threats from external agents); and resilience (the ability to withstand diverse disruptions) of energy systems. Our analysis of energy security issues in over 130 countries shows that the absolute majority of them are vulnerable from at least one of these three perspectives. For most industrial countries, energy insecurity means import dependency and aging infrastructure, while many emerging economies have additional vulnerabilities such as insufficient capacity, high energy intensity, and rapid demand growth. In many low-income countries, multiple vulnerabilities overlap, making them especially insecure. Oil and its products lack easily available substitutes in the transport sector, where they provide at least 90% of energy in almost all countries. Furthermore, the global demand for transport fuels is steadily rising, especially rapidly in Asian emerging economies. Disruptions of oil supplies may thus result in catastrophic effects on such vital functions of modern states as food production, medical care, and internal security. At the same time, the global production capacity of conventional oil is widely perceived as limited. These factors result in rising and volatile prices of oil affecting all economies, especially low-income countries, almost all of which import over 80% of their oil supplies.

The distribution of the major economies’ effort in the Durban platform scenarios

The feasibility of achieving climate stabilization consistent with the objective of 2°C is heavily influenced by how the effort in terms of mitigation and economic resources will be distributed among the major economies. This paper provides a multi-model quantification of the mitigation commitment in 10 major regions of the world for a diversity of allocation schemes. Our results indicate that a policy with uniform carbon pricing and no transfer payments would yield an uneven distribution of policy costs, which would be lower than the global average for OECD countries, higher for developing economies and the highest, for energy exporters. We show that a resource sharing scheme based on long-term convergence of per capita emissions would not resolve the issue of cost distribution. An effort sharing scheme which equalizes regional policy costs would yield an allocation of allowances comparable with the ones proposed by the Major Economies. Under such a scheme, emissions would peak between 2030 and 2045 for China and remain rather flat for India. In all cases, a very large international carbon market would be required.

2 °C and SDGs: united they stand, divided they fall?

The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the new international climate treaty could put 2015 into the history books as a defining year for setting human development on a more sustainable pathway. The global climate policy and SDG agendas are highly interconnected: the way that the climate problem is addressed strongly affects the prospects of meeting numerous other SDGs and vice versa. Drawing on existing scenario results from a recent energy-economy-climate model inter-comparison project, this letter analyses these synergies and (risk) trade-offs of alternative 2 °C pathways across indicators relevant for energy-related SDGs and sustainable energy objectives. We find that limiting the availability of key mitigation technologies yields some co-benefits and decreases risks specific to these technologies but greatly increases many others. Fewer synergies and substantial trade-offs across SDGs are locked into the system for weak short-term climate policies that are broadly in line with current Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), particularly when combined with constraints on technologies. Lowering energy demand growth is key to managing these trade-offs and creating synergies across multiple energy-related SD dimensions. We argue that SD considerations are central for choosing socially acceptable 2 °C pathways: the prospects of meeting other SDGs need not dwindle and can even be enhanced for some goals if appropriate climate policy choices are made. Progress on the climate policy and SDG agendas should therefore be tracked within a unified framework.

Global energy security under different climate policies, GDP growth rates and fossil resource availabilities

Energy security is one of the main drivers of energy policies. Understanding energy security implications of long-term scenarios is crucial for informed policy making, especially with respect to transformations of energy systems required to stabilize climate change. This paper evaluates energy security under several global energy scenarios, modeled in the REMIND and WITCH integrated assessment models. The paper examines the effects of long-term climate policies on energy security under different assumptions about GDP growth and fossil fuel availability. It uses a systematic energy security assessment framework and a set of global and regional indicators for risks associated with energy trade and resilience associated with diversity of energy options. The analysis shows that climate policies significantly reduce the risks and increase the resilience of energy systems in the first half of the century. Climate policies also make energy supply, energy mix, and energy trade less dependent upon assumptions of fossil resource availability and GDP growth, and thus more predictable than in the baseline scenarios.

ENERGY SECURITY OF CHINA, INDIA, THE E.U. AND THE U.S. UNDER LONG-TERM SCENARIOS: RESULTS FROM SIX IAMs

This paper assesses energy security in three long-term energy scenarios (business as usual development, a projection of Copenhagen commitments, and a 450 ppm stabilization scenario) as modeled in six integrated assessment models: GCAM, IMAGE, MESSAGE, ReMIND, TIAM-ECN and WITCH. We systematically evaluate long-term vulnerabilities of vital energy systems of four major economies: China, the European Union (E.U.), India and the U.S., as expressed by several characteristics of energy trade, resource extraction, and diversity of energy options. Our results show that climate policies are likely to lead to significantly lower global energy trade and reduce energy imports of major economies, decrease the rate of resource depletion, and increase the diversity of energy options. China, India and the E.U. would derive particularly strong benefits from climate policies, whereas the U.S. may forego some opportunities to export fossil fuels in the second half of the century.This paper assesses energy security in three long-term energy scenarios (a business as usual development, a projection of Copenhagen commitments, and a 450 scenario) as modeled in six integrated assessment models: GCAM, IMAGE, MESSAGE, ReMIND, TIAM-ECN and WITCH. We systematically evaluate potential long-term vulnerabilities of vital energy systems of four major economies: China, the European Union, India and the US, as expressed by several characteristics of energy trade, resource extraction, and diversity of energy options. Our results show that climate policies are likely to lead to significantly lower global energy trade and reduce energy imports of major economies, decrease the rate of resource depletion, and increase the diversity of energy systems, particularly in the especially vulnerable transportation sector. China, India and the EU will derive particularly strong benefits from climate policies, whereas the US may forego some opportunities to export fossil fuels in the 2nd half of the century. (Less)

Energy security assessment framework and three case-studies

This chapter provides a novel framework for assessing energy security and illustrates its application by the Global Energy Assessment, the IEA Model for Short-term energy security and in several studies of long-term global energy security.

Limited emission reductions from fuel subsidy removal except in energy-exporting regions

Hopes are high that removing fossil fuel subsidies could help to mitigate climate change by discouraging inefficient energy consumption and levelling the playing field for renewable energy. In September 2016, the G20 countries re-affirmed their 2009 commitment (at the G20 Leaders’ Summit) to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and many national governments are using today’s low oil prices as an opportunity to do so. In practical terms, this means abandoning policies that decrease the price of fossil fuels and electricity generated from fossil fuels to below normal market prices. However, whether the removal of subsidies, even if implemented worldwide, would have a large impact on climate change mitigation has not been systematically explored. Here we show that removing fossil fuel subsidies would have an unexpectedly small impact on global energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions and would not increase renewable energy use by 2030. Subsidy removal would reduce the carbon price necessary to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration at 550 parts per million by only 2–12 per cent under low oil prices. Removing subsidies in most regions would deliver smaller emission reductions than the Paris Agreement (2015) climate pledges and in some regions global subsidy removal may actually lead to an increase in emissions, owing to either coal replacing subsidized oil and natural gas or natural-gas use shifting from subsidizing, energy-exporting regions to non-subsidizing, importing regions. Our results show that subsidy removal would result in the largest CO2 emission reductions in high-income oil- and gas-exporting regions, where the reductions would exceed the climate pledges of these regions and where subsidy removal would affect fewer people living below the poverty line than in lower-income regions.

International political economy of nuclear energy

The use of nuclear power has been driven by the motivation to meet growing electricity demand while avoiding dependence on imported fossil fuels and constrained by capacities to launch nuclear energy programmes. The chapter argues that tension between the two is a defining feature of the international political economy of nuclear energy. On the one hand, nuclear technology promises energy security and industrial modernisation. On the other hand, launching nuclear programmes can plunge countries into three forms of international dependence: on imported uranium, on production and disposal of nuclear fuel, and on the uneven capacities to manufacture nuclear reactors and construct nuclear power plants. The authors argue that international cooperation and competition profoundly shape how states deploy, expand and phase out their nuclear power programmes and brings together diverse international aspects of nuclear power which may increasingly shape the future of nuclear energy.

Regional Low-Emission Pathways from Global Models

Governments worldwide have agreed that international climate policy should aim to limit the increase of global mean temperature to less than 2oC with respect to pre-industrial levels. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the emission reductions and related energy system changes in various countries in pathways consistent with the 2oC target. We synthesize and provide an overview of the national and regional information contained in different scenarios from various global models published over the last few years, as well as yet unpublished scenarios submitted by modelling teams participating in the MILES project (Modelling and Informing Low-Emission Strategies). We find that emissions in the mitigation scenarios are significantly reduced in all regions compared to the baseline without climate policies. The regional cumulative CO2 emissions show on average a 76% reduction between the baseline and 450 scenario. The 450 scenarios show a reduction of primary energy demand in all countries of roughly 30-40% compared to the baseline. In the baseline scenario, the contribution of low-carbon energy technology remains around 15%, i.e. similar as today. In the mitigation scenario, these numbers are scaled up rapidly towards 2050. Looking at air quality, sulphur dioxide and black carbon emissions are strongly reduced as a co-benefit of greenhouse gas emission reductions, in both developing and developed countries. However, black carbon emissions increase in countries that strongly rely on bioenergy to reach mitigation targets. Concerning energy security, energy importing countries generally experience a decrease in net-energy imports in mitigation scenarios compared to the baseline development, while energy exporters experience a loss of energy export revenues.