In Short : Experts broadly agree that keeping global temperature rise to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, the world’s self-imposed climate goal — and ideally as low as 1.5 degrees — will require peaking and then rapidly reducing fossil-fueled power, in favor of carbon-free sources, like wind and solar. (The world has already warmed about 1.2 degrees since preindustrial times.)
In Detail : Carbon-free electricity has never been more plentiful. Wind and solar power have taken off over the past two decades, faster than experts ever expected. But it hasn’t yet been enough to halt the rise of coal- and gas-burning generation.
That’s because global demand for electricity has grown even faster than clean energy, leaving fossil fuels to fill the gap.
The dynamic has pushed up carbon emissions from the power sector at a time when scientists say they need to be falling — and fast — to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.
Much of the rising power demand has come from rapidly-developing countries like China and India, where new coal plants are still coming online alongside wind and solar farms to power meteoric economic growth. But many industrialized nations are also not moving away from fossil fuels fast enough to meet their stated climate change goals.
Even on today’s trajectory, many experts expect that fossil-fueled power will peak globally in the next few years. It’s already falling in major economies like the United States and Europe, and analysts expect China, by far the world’s largest power producer, to begin reducing coal-fired generation soon.
The world’s climate future will depend, in large part, on what happens next.
“The big question,” said Dave Jones, an electricity analyst at Ember, a London-based think tank, is whether countries can increase the pace of renewable energy deployment so that they’re not just bringing down power sector emissions slowly, but “actually enabling deep and rapid carbon dioxide emissions cuts.”
That question will take center stage at a global climate summit later this month.
The stakes are enormous.
The power sector is already the world’s single biggest source of planet-warming emissions. And plans to decarbonize many other parts of the global economy — like transportation, buildings and industry — also rely on plugging in to cleaner power.
How electricity generation has changed in recent decades for the world’s major power producers, both rich countries and rapidly-developing ones, helps explain today’s global picture and underscores the climate challenges ahead.