The private sector will play a critical role in driving a low carbon transition, but it is the governments who will determine the pace and direction of any transition, said the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its annual flagship publication World Energy Outlook 2018. Under current and planned policies, energy consumption is expected to increase by more than 25 per cent to 2040 and require more than US$2 trillion a year of investment in new energy supply.
“Our analysis shows that over 70 per cent of global energy investments will be government-driven and as such the message is clear – the world’s energy destiny lies with government decisions,” said Dr Fatih Birol, Executive Director of IEA. “Crafting the right policies and proper incentives will be critical to meeting our common goals of securing energy supplies, reducing carbon emissions, improving air quality in urban centres, and expanding basic access to energy in Africa and elsewhere.”
While carbon emissions are projected to continue its “slow but steady upward path” to 2040, averting dangerous levels of climate change continues to be possible, but will require sustained, urgent, and ambitious action from policymakers, businesses, and investors worldwide, said the report.
To put the world on track for 2 degrees Celcius of warming, the IEA called for a worldwide “systematic preference for sustainable energy technologies”, which already accounts for 45 per cent of the growth in global energy demand; retrofitting existing buildings and transport infrastructure to reduce energy use; and using low-carbon technologies such as carbon capture, utilisation, and storage to reduce emissions from existing coal-fired power plants.