The Energy Transition Is Slowing Down

The Paris Agreement goal of holding warming to well less than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels is not just increasingly appearing to be out of reach. The energy transition as a whole is slowing down.

This was the stark warning from Wood Mackenzie’s Energy Transition Outlook, the energy consultancy’s annual assessment of global progress toward decarbonizing the economy. “Progress toward a low-carbon energy system is stumbling on multiple fronts, leaving the world dependent on fossil fuels for longer,” the outlook’s authors write.

Alongside the International Energy Agency’s Global Energy Outlook, which found faster than expected global electricity demand imperiling Paris goals, and the United Nations Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report, which warned that unless emissions were soon wrenched down “it will become impossible” to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the report completes a grim picture. The question now is less “Can the world meet the Paris Agreement goals?” and more “How will we manage once we’ve missed them?”

Wood Mackenzie takes 2.5 degrees of warming as its “base case,” consistent with other estimates, including the IEA’s. The report’s authors have little optimism left about the prospect of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 and limiting warming to 1.5 degrees. Instead, they used to the report to “highlight the potential of a delayed transition,” in which warming rises to 3 degrees, said Jonathan Sultoon, Wood Mackenzie’s head of markets and transitions, on a call with reporters Monday.

“We’re in the middle of the 2020s, the decade that’s pivotal to accelerate the energy transition” Sultoon said, “and no major countries — and very few companies — are on track to meet their 2030 climate goals.”

To meet even the 2.5 degree warming scenario — one that many scientists warn could result in difficult to predict and possibly irreversible climate impacts — would still require that global emissions peak by 2027. Emissions, instead, are rising — by some 1.3% in 2023, according to the United Nations.

The likelihood of slipping from 2.5 degrees to 3 will be determined by politics, Wood Mackenzie’s analysts argue, whether it’s the war in Ukraine and unstable Middle East leading countries to reinvest in fossil fuels for energy security or protectionist policies that block imports of world-leading low-priced Chinese renewable technology.

“China’s the lower-cost producer in clean tech,” Sultoon said. “Either the rest of the world needs to rely on Chinese manufacturing to speed the transition,” or “the West will pay a higher cost — or, in fact, delay the transition. And it looks far more likely to be that latter situation than the former.”

Policymakers in the rest of the high-emitting world, especially the United States, are perfectly aware of China’s dominance of much of the low-carbon technology stack, ranging from solar panels to lithium refining. But they’re seeking to nurture their own industries, seeking both to secure energy supplies in case of global conflict and to protect native workers and industries.

The political or security logic of these movies might be clear enough, but the Wood Mackenzie analysts are skeptical of this approach, at least when it comes to advancing decarbonization. “These dual goals — of decarbonisation and reducing dependence on metals supply from China — are at odds,” they write. “It will take years, if not decades, to shift away from China because it controls up to 70% of global supply chains across several commodities. It is also the lowest-cost producer. The rest of the world may need to rely on Chinese manufacturing or be prepared to either pay a higher cost or delay the transition.”

And then there’s the growth in electricity demand, which the IEA also highlighted. While any scenario that brings down emissions globally to levels consistent with even 2.5 degrees of warming, let alone 1.5, will involve a high degree of electrification of processes currently reliant on the combustion of fossil fuels, new demand for electricity can have ambiguous effects on overall emissions depending on the ability of non-carbon-emitting generation to meet that demand.

“The quick expansion of electricity supply is often constrained by transmission infrastructure which takes time to develop,” the report says. This means new demand could be met by fossil fuels, that the energy transition could become more expensive than it would be under a lower demand scenario, or that some crucial amount of electrification just simply does not happen.

“What happens if geopolitical crises, expanded trade restrictions, or protectionist policies becomes the norm, rather than the exception on a long-term basis? And where you see slower cost declines for alternative energy?” asked David Brown, director of Wood Mackenzie’s energy transition practice. If things continue as they are, that's a question we’ll all have to answer.