Renewables approaching a tipping point

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Renewables approaching a tipping point

One of the executive orders signed by President Biden on his first day in office, was to revoke the permits for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline connecting tar sands in Alberta, Canada to refineries in the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Critics of the project, which was halted by Barack Obama in 2015 and revived by Donald Trump in 2017, praised the new President’s resolve before proceeding to demand the shutting down of another two pipelines, the Dakota Access and the Line 3.

The White House National Climate Advisor, Gina McCarthy, assured alarmed oil companies of a common-sense approach to fossil fuels, but the Biden administration has set a clear goal of decarbonising the US energy sector by 2035.

The shift to renewable sources such as wind and solar, is a global trend. Nine out of ten signatory countries of the Paris Agreement earmarked renewables as part of their strategies to arrest the rise in the planet’s temperature. More than 130 governments committed to quantified renewable energy targets in their Nationally Determined Contributions.

A report by the International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that, if commitments were met by all countries, the capacity for power generation from renewables would jump by 42 percent within the decade, producing an estimated 3,564 gigawatts by 2030.

Last year, the EU Commission announced that the share of renewable energy in the bloc more than doubled from 2004,

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accounting for 19.7 percent in 2019. This put the EU well on course to reach the agreed 2020 target of growing the portion of renewables to a fifth of total energy consumption. The EC now set its sights on a 32 percent share of renewable energy in gross final consumption by 2030.

The worldwide leap to non-fossils is, perhaps, best illustrated in the inauguration of the Gujarat wind and solar park in India, last December. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the 30 gigawatt project as the world’s largest renewable energy facility, bringing the ambition to generate 175 gigawatts from renewables by 2022 fully into view.

The International Energy Agency calculates that renewables have been the energy sources most resilient to the disruptions of the pandemic while demand for renewable electricity remained virtually unaffected throughout the crisis. Indeed, despite restrictions on production facilities and supply chains in 2020, demand for energy from renewables registered an increase of one percent from 2019. The switch from fossils to renewables, however, has wider implications than environmental protection. Governments must contend with delicate social and economic issues as much as ecological ones.

A collaborative migration model to renewable solutions ensures a just and successful outcome on all fronts.