The gas “crisis” is testing the European Union in its environmental ambitions. It also sets both the guidelines and the constraints of a transition to so-called clean energies that will have to be greatly accelerated, warns the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Again Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund urged governments not to resort to widespread subsidies in the energy sector in response to soaring oil and gas prices.
In the short term, targeted mitigation measures will be necessary, but in the longer term, “the reality is that we have been experiencing this great volatility in oil and gas prices for a long time, and the only way to deal with this permanently is to move forward towards greener economies ”, hammered in a press conference Paulo Medas, deputy division head in the organization.
The European Commission has in fact offered Member States temporary means of intervention aimed at reducing the bills of consumers and the most vulnerable households, in particular by using carbon market revenues. But the “crisis” quickly revived the debate on the heaviness of energy taxes, calling into question the Commission’s ambitions to reduce carbon emissions, which include the gradual increase in the cost of fossil fuels. “Only a fifth of the current price increase can be attributed to the carbon market, the rest comes from supply shortages”, recently said Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the Commission, calling for further accelerating the transition to renewables for reduce dependence on oil, we read in a text from Agence France-Presse.
He could have added that the two most populous countries, India and China, are already experiencing shortages that are starting to affect manufacturing activity.
High demand
In a report published on Wednesday, economists Stéfane Marion and Matthieu Arseneau, of the National Bank, stress that energy prices face high demand and shortages exacerbated by adverse climatic conditions and droughts which slow down production. hydroelectric. Soaring carbon permit prices in many OECD countries are also contributing to this, while exacerbating supply chain constraints.
From an analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, it is concluded that “decades of procrastination in the face of climate change have transformed the transition which was hoped to be gentle into a transition which will probably be abrupt.” Thus, “the looming situation in the European Union and the United Kingdom, where the taxation of CO emissions2 has soared, illustrates the considerable difficulties of too rapid a transition to the detriment of fossil fuels without an adequate replacement system in place ”.
But arbitrations will have to be made, because it will nevertheless be necessary to accelerate this transition, warns the IEA. The agency now places net zero emissions in 2050 at the heart of a new report anchored on the objective of stabilizing global warming aligned with the target of 1.5 ° C or less. And the journey between now and then will not be a long calm river, on a planet which will then have seen the addition of two billion humans to the current population.
The IEA compares net zero emissions to two scenarios. In the first, the States are continuing their current momentum with targeted initiatives and stronger action sector by sector. This scenario provides for an accelerated transition in energy production, sufficient to trigger a gradual decline in emissions by sector despite demand for electricity expected to double by 2050. These efforts are however offset by continued growth in industrial emissions from cement factories in particular. , steelworks and heavy transport due to infrastructure development in emerging and developed economies.
In this scenario, almost all of the energy demand in 2050 would be met by low-carbon sources, which would still leave the total level of emissions around the current level. The warming would reach 2.6 ° C in 2100 compared to the pre-industrial level.
Achieving carbon neutrality in 2050
In the second scenario, the fifty or so states that have done so, plus the European Union, would apply their targets for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. The growth curve for global emissions would begin to decline over the period 2030. , the vast majority of energy production comes from low carbon sources.
Coal consumption in the power generation sector would then be 20% below recent highs. For their part, electric vehicles and energy efficiency would promote peak oil demand around 2025. And efficiency gains would bring global energy demand to a post-2030 plateau.
Global emissions in the CO-related energy sector2 would fall by 40% over the period 2030, which would not prevent the rise in the average temperature from reaching 2.1 ° C in 2100.
“The transition to clean energy is too slow to meet demand,” concludes the IEA.