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Since 1993, the International Energy Agencys (IEA) World Energy Outlook has been an authoritative report on energy statistics and guidance on future energy supply and demand developments. However, an examination of these reports indicates that even their most progressive scenarios have vastly underestimated the growth of renewable energy technologies, especially solar photovoltaics. Since its founding in 1973, a fundamental objective of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has been the coordination of global responses to energy crises. With the current climate crisis, the IEAs World Energy Outlook (WEO) scenarios have become the standard-bearer for global energy projections, particularly the recently introduced 2050 Net-Zero Emissions (NZE) scenario, published for the first time in 2021, in the IEAs mission to help countries provide secure and sustainable energy for all. New research from Finland’s LUT University examines outlook projections, which represent business-as-usual conditions, and normative projections, which point to higher levels of sustainability scenarios, in all WEOs published between 1993 and 2022. The study, titled “ Paving the way towards a sustainable future or lagging behind? An ex-post analysis of the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook,” is published in the scientific journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews . The analysis indicates that while projections of high-level indicators such as primary and final energy demand have been largely accurate, projections of renewable energy growth across all WEOs have greatly underestimated the unprecedented growth in variable renewable electricity, especially solar PV, a finding confirmed by Auke Hoekstra in 2019. The largest solar PV capacity recorded is that of the 2022 WEO NZE scenario, with 15.5 TW by 2050, corresponding to approximately 27,000 TWh of electricity generation. Although these values ??are within the range of published literature on 100% renewable energy, they only correspond to 18% of total primary energy demand. Furthermore, renewable electricity supplies only 40% of primary energy. In contrast, previous research from LUT University has found a global installed solar PV capacity of 63.4 TW, with solar PV electricity generation accounting for 69% of total primary energy demand and all primary renewable electricity generation accounting for 87%. This key finding was subsequently adopted by the international solar PV community and is also monitored in the International Technology Roadmap for PV . Annual solar PV installations further highlight the underestimations of solar PV growth, as annual additions peak in the NZE 2022 scenario at 657 GW/year in 2040 before declining in 2050. This peak solar PV installation rate is only slightly higher than the total installed capacity in 2024 of 593 GW. Given the rapid growth and low cost of solar PV, global solar PV markets can be expected to reach 1 TW/year between 2025 and 2030, and may reach 3 TW/year over the course of the 2030s—well beyond the IEAs projections. The question, then, is why do even the IEAs most ambitious scenarios lead to limited renewable electrification and solar PV growth? A central element of research on the renewable energy systems transition is system-wide electrification. Results indicate that the share of electricity in final energy demand reaches 49–52%, which largely coincides with the electrification of heat and road transport demand using battery electric vehicles and the value of smart EV charging and its vehicle-to-grid opportunities. The integration of heat pumps is essential for the electrification of heat, and the 2022 NZE scenario projects that 52% of building heat demand can be covered by 6.1 TW of heat pumps. Direct electrification appears to be sufficiently considered in the NZE 2022 scenario; however, this is not sufficient for system-wide defossilization, as the remaining 40–50% of final energy demand will require hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels for high-temperature heat, long-haul shipping and air transport, and feedstocks in the steel and chemical industries. Fuel and feedstock demand in the NZE 2022 scenario appears to be largely covered by bioenergy and fossil oil. However, “power-to-X” routes using electricity-based hydrogen have been found to be capable of defossilizing fuel demand using e-Fischer-Tropsch liquids and e-ammonia. e-Methanol and e-ammonia will also be critical for industry to defossilize chemical feedstocks, along with e-hydrogen to defossilize primary steelmaking and support other energy-intensive industries. However, these power-to-X conversion routes require a low-cost renewable electricity input to be economically viable. In turn, global energy systems will gain considerable flexibility as electrolyzers can operate as excess renewable electricity becomes available, reducing the amounts of electricity that will need to be balanced by storage. The lack of power-to-X penetration in the WEO policy scenarios may be a factor limiting the growth of solar PV. Although hydrogen production in the 2022 NZE reaches around 12,000 TWhH2,LHV, only 41% is used as an intermediary for power-to-X conversion, and 27% of the hydrogen supply is fossil-fuel-based blue hydrogen. Without demand flexibility in the energy system, the balance of variable renewable electricity will have to come from storage, primarily battery storage. Battery storage capacity is available in the most recent WEOs, with the 2022 NZE projecting 3.9 TW by 2050. Previous research from LUT University indicates that, by 2050, total battery capacity could reach more than 13.5 TW. Research on the model used for the WEO suggests that only utility-scale battery storage is included, but distributed prosumer batteries and vehicle connections to the grid can provide cheap distributed storage to help match renewable electricity supply with demand. All of these factors contribute to future energy systems being able to accommodate high shares of solar PV and wind power, and can support the development of a larger “Power-to-X” economy. Large cost reductions in solar PV largely favor sun-rich regions, where most of the demand growth is expected. A “solar blitz” is underway in Pakistan and could serve as a global example of how developing economies can rapidly install renewable electricity to decarbonize their electricity supplies and overcome the commonly understood carbon intensity associated with economic growth. A similar shift can be seen in Ethiopia, where battery electric vehicles are rapidly being adopted. If global changes can happen quickly with enough social willpower, why shouldn’t the IEA inspire global decision-makers with technically and economically viable best-case scenarios for long-term climate stability: a fully renewable energy supply by 2050, leveraging the vast benefits of solar PV, wind, other renewables, batteries, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and electricity-based fuels, among other technologies highly relevant to the emerging Power-to-X Economy? |
