It’s a subtilty, but this isn’t a positive sign for the battle against climate change. “It could have been worse” reports are a byproduct of a lack of truly good news. It can always be worse. This is an example of a movement looking to extract a sliver of positivity from what is increasingly looking like a failing strategy.
Don’t get me wrong. We can solve this problem, but it requires a different approach and a longer-term planning horizon.
Here’s the bottom line from the recent International Energy Agency Clean Energy Market Monitor and CO2 Emission Report: emissions increased 1.1% in 2023. That doesn’t mean current efforts are ineffective. They aren’t. Emission rose 1.3% in 2022, so the glass-half-full view is that we’re trending in the right direction. Nonetheless, there is no chance of holding warming to 1.5 degrees C, and if we continue down this path, we can expect similar reports in the future.
That’s because emissions rose despite solar and wind installations experiencing massive growth in 2023: 85% year-over-year for solar and almost 60% for wind. And EV sales rose 35%.
Those numbers are unsustainable. And when you consider the latest IRENA report indicating that we need to triple renewables deployment and double our energy efficiency efforts, it quickly becomes obvious that something isn’t working. In fact, many things are not working and many of the assumptions being made have no foundation in reality.
In the video I promised to reveal the source of clean energy that went in the wrong direction. There was actually one clean energy source and one technology. The technology was heat pumps, which after two consecutive years of growth, saw a 3% decline in global sales. The IEA attributed the decline to two factors: an aversion to large-ticket purchases caused by higher interest rates and inflation, and lower natural gas prices. Guess what: we’re going to see the same pattern in solar.
The clean energy source was hydropower. Droughts in China, the U.S. and other regions caused a dramatic decline in hydropower. So much so that the IEA attributed 40% of the emission increase its drop.
Think that’s a one-off? Not when you emphasize technologies that rely on the elements. And the very problem you’re attempting to solve is making those elements – solar, wind, and water – unpredictable.
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