Emerging markets take fresh leap in renewables

Researchers have seen an energetic leap in renewable energy initiative by emerging markets as they spring in a swift, frisky curvet investing in that space.
They expressed the opinion that the amount of electricity generated from burning fossil fuels has likely peaked worldwide, as emerging markets invest in clean and cheap renewables over coal, oil and gas.

That is the finding of a report published Wednesday by environmental think tanks Carbon Tracker, in the UK, and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) in India. The researchers say that emerging markets will provide 88 per cent of the growth in electricity demand over the next two decades, and say these markets are increasingly leapfrogging polluting energy sources that are uncompetitive.

Clearly fossil fuel plants haven’t disappeared, said Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of CEEW and co-author of the report. But the new electricity capacity is “almost entirely likely to be non-fossil fuels.”

About one in every nine people on the planet lack access to electricity, mostly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Leaders of poorer countries have historically had to choose between raising living standards and protecting the climate and people’s health. Two recent studies estimate that between 1 million and 8 million people die each year from breathing in dirty air that comes from burning coal, oil and gas.

But as the cost of renewable energy plummets, that trade-off is starting to vanish. Countries like Kenya and Nigeria with fast-growing populations but low emissions could skip fossil fuel electricity altogether and avoid the destructive pathway taken in many industrialised countries.

Other countries like India and China could switch from coal to solar and wind without relying on fossil gas. The report draws an analogy with the telecommunications industry, where emerging markets went from a small amount of fixed line phones directly to mobile without wasting money on unnecessary physical infrastructure. A similar shift has been seen in banking. But another report finds that shorter-term electricity trends are worrying.

Renewable electricity generation continues to grow strongly but cannot keep up with increasing demand, according to a separate report published Thursday by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Despite the rapid increases, the authors wrote, renewables are expected to serve only around half of the projected growth in global demand in 2021 and 2022.

“Fossil fuels fill most of the gap,” tweeted IEA executive director Fatih Birol. The agency projects a rebound in coal that would surpass pre-pandemic levels in 2021 and could reach an all-time high in 2022. Such a rise would push the world further away from its target of keeping global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius — and ideally no higher than 1.5 C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — compared to pre-industrial levels.