A discussion with Cédric Philibert from the International Energy Agency
“Renewable energy technologies are a crucial part of a portfolio of options that are needed for achieving a secure and sustainable energy mix.”
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A former science journalist, Cédric Philibert joined the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2000. Before that, he served as an adviser to the French environment minister and to the CEO of the French Agency for the Environment and Energy Efficiency.
The IEA is an autonomous organisation that works to ensure reliable, affordable, and clean energy for its 29 member countries and beyond. Founded in response to the 1973–4 oil crisis that caused a dramatic global hike in oil prices, the IEA’s initial role was to help countries co-ordinate a collective response to major disruptions in oil supply. While this remains a key aspect of its work, the IEA has evolved and expanded. It is at the heart of the global dialogue on energy, providing authoritative research, statistics, analysis, and recommendations.
The Beam: What is the International Energy Agency (IEA) and what are its main objectives?
Cédric Philibert: The IEA is an autonomous organisation at the heart of the global dialogue on energy, working to ensure reliable, affordable, and clean energy for its 29 member countries and beyond. Founded in response to the 1973–4 oil crisis, the IEA’s initial role was to help countries co-ordinate a collective response to major disruptions in oil supply and to “reduce dependence on imported oil, including: conservation of energy, development of alternative sources of energy [and] energy research and development”.
While oil security remains a key aspect of its work, the IEA has evolved and expanded. It provides authoritative research, statistics, analysis, and recommendations in all forms of energy security, including the use of renewables, as well as economic development and environmental awareness and engagement worldwide.
IEA members must first belong to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), so another top agency priority is to build good working relationships with countries beyond its membership, in particular with major energy consuming, producing, and transiting countries. This co-operation covers a wide range of activities, including in-depth surveys of specific energy sectors in partner countries, or their preparedness for major disruptions to oil and gas supplies, and holding training and capacity-building activities to spread best practices in energy policy and energy statistics.
The IEA was created in 1974. What got you interested in renewable energies before they became mainstream?
Renewable energy technologies are a crucial part of a portfolio of options that are needed for achieving a secure and sustainable energy mix. So the IEA has indeed long been interested in renewable energy.
Initial IEA work on renewables mainly focused on monitoring and supporting technology research and development, notably through what are now known as the IEA Technology Collaboration Programmes, overseen by the IEA Renewable Energy Working Party. These independent groups, now comprising more than 6,000 experts, enable governments and industries from around the world to lead programmes and projects on a wide range of energy technologies and related issues, including renewable energy.
In 2005 the Gleneagles Group of 8 summit directed the IEA to significantly expand its work in renewables, specifically asking it to expand into scenario modelling, assessment of policies, and analysis of market integration issues. One result is that the IEA, in its flagship publication World Energy Outlook (WEO) and another publication, Energy Technology Perspectives, has introduced low-carbon scenarios showing how policies can most effectively increase renewables’ share of the energy mix to 2040 and beyond.
But we do not look just at the long term. In July 2012, the IEA introduced its Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report, an annual analysis of recent global trends plus the outlook looking forward, much as similar titles from the Agency do for oil, gas, coal and more recently energy efficiency.
Finally, the IEA continues to work extensively with researchers and others pushing forward renewables, both market-tested systems like solar photovoltaics and others, like wave energy, through the Technology Collaboration Programmes. For instance, one area we focus on is how renewable energy can be best incorporated into electrical grids to provide a secure supply even though the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine.
What is the Energy Technology Perspectives report and what are its main goals?
Each year, the IEA book Energy Technology Perspectives offers a comprehensive, long-term analysis of trends in the energy sector — and of the technologies that are essential to achieving an affordable, secure, and low-carbon system. It models the global outlook to 2050 under three scenarios, including the 2 Degree Scenario, which lays out a pathway for the most efficacious means of limiting global warming to no more than 2°C by shifting the energy system to a low-carbon future.
Energy Technology Perspectives also features the IEA Tracking Clean Energy report, produced for the Clean Energy Ministerial of that year. This report card assesses each clean energy technology or sector, from wind power to carbon capture and storage, against interim targets of the 2 Degree Scenario for 2025. For the first time, the 2015 report found that despite positive signs in many areas, not one of the technology fields tracked was meeting its objectives.
Do you believe that the big conferences like the UN Climate Conference in Paris make a difference? How so?
The IEA has long and consistently supported setting a long-term goal on collective greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and it participates in the work and international meetings of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Last year, the IEA warmly congratulated all parties for the successful conclusion of the landmark Paris Agreement at the UNFCCC’s COP21 climate talks held under the leadership of the French Presidency. “The Paris Agreement is nothing less than a historic milestone for the global energy sector,” the IEA said. “It will speed up the transformation of the energy sector by accelerating investments in cleaner technologies and energy efficiency.”
Throughout COP21, the IEA provided data, expertise, and recommendations to the delegates to help reach the accord. “Any agreement in Paris must have energy at its core — otherwise it risks to be a failure,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said at one of several press conference he gave during the negotiations, and he challenged the plenary session of COP21 to elevate energy from the leading cause of climate change to the leading solution. The IEA provided four key messages for the talks aimed at a successful and effective resolution.
Dr. Birol was clear that “COP21 is a critical and necessary step in ongoing and increasing global efforts to decarbonise the energy sector and limit global warming”.
Are you positive about the growth prospects of renewable energy? Energy Technology Perspectives notes that in particular China and the emerging economies are doing more than expected, but progress in the industrialised world was disappointing. Can you elaborate on this?
Indeed we see a shift towards deployment in emerging economies that now represents two-thirds of energy investment in renewables. This results primarily from growing energy demand, notably in Asia. Renewables, in particular onshore wind power and solar photovoltaics, together with already established hydropower technologies, offer options for rapid deployment at costs that in most places are competitive with alternatives.
In industrialised countries the pace of deployment is more constrained as the economy is already supplied; incumbents are seeing shrinkage in the rate of utilisation of their existing assets.
Still, in both parts of the world, consistent policy is critical to facilitate the transition to a low-carbon energy system. Even when renewables produce electricity more cheaply than fossil fuels, renewable power plants are more capital intensive and therefore need a framework that guarantees sufficient returns on investment in the long run. “Spot” wholesale markets can hardly support decarbonisation, so policy makers should not conclude from renewables’ new competitiveness that there is no need for policy intervention. In countries where there is no real electricity market — where there is a vertically integrated, monopolistic utility — there is also often the need for a strong policy intervention to allow renewable electricity to enter the grid — and sometimes to strengthen or extend the grids.
But, yes, we are positive about the growth prospects for renewable energy, especially in the field of electricity, provided governments maintain and develop market and policy frameworks that are conducive to investments. Relying on IEA-generated data as well as information from government departments and more than 100 companies and organisations, the most recent edition of our Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report sees the share of renewable energy in global power generation rising to above 26% by 2020 — or more than today’s combined electricity demand of China, India and Brazil. That’s up from 18% in 2005 and 22% in 2013 — a remarkable shift in a very limited period of time. Renewables other than hydropower would see their share of that 26% growing from 10% in 2005 to 37% by 2020, perhaps even more.
However, prospects for renewable heat and transport are less optimistic. They are more directly facing the threat of an extended period of low-priced fossil fuels. Policy makers must give these sectors much greater attention.
How could we achieve a 100% renewable energy future?
A 100% renewable energy future raises many challenges and is really a long-term prospect. Even our most renewables-heavy outlook sees some use of fossil fuels through 2050 in long-range transportation, notably aviation and marine. Those sectors could be made more efficient and sustainable but they can hardly substitute fossil fuels entirely with renewable sources such as biofuels.
In industry, too, we can see efficiency improvements and substitution by renewable sources such as bioenergy or solar heat, as well as increased use of electricity generated from renewables. But it will be difficult to end all use of fossils by 2050, our longest outlook period, in particular in industrial processes like steelmaking and cement manufacturing. Still, we are working on these topics.
Even with respect to electricity, the call to shift to 100% renewable generation may not be optimal. The high-renewables variant of our 2 Degree Scenario in our book Energy Technology Perspectives has shown that renewables could provide up to 80% of global electricity at affordable costs by 2050.
Existing studies by other organisations positing 100% renewable electricity systems suggest that, except in countries with large hydropower availability or very little inter-seasonal variations in both demand and resources, going to 100% renewable electricity might require some relatively costly and inefficient inter-seasonal storage technologies. From a decarbonisation standpoint, a better choice might be to retain some flexible fossil fuel use, ideally with carbon capture and storage (CCS), or nuclear power. Then the almost-entirely decarbonised electricity could be used to substitute for fossil fuel use in the buildings, industry, and transport sectors.
What is the role of sustainable energy in ending poverty and advancing climate justice according to you and how does the work of the IEA help to accomplish this goal?
Modern energy services are crucial to human wellbeing and to a country’s economic development. Access to modern energy is essential for the provision of clean water, sanitation, and healthcare and for the provision of reliable and efficient lighting, heating, cooking, mechanical power, transport, and telecommunications services. Yet our flagship publication World Energy Outlook (WEO) reports that globally 1.2 billion people are without access to electricity and more than 2.7 billion people are without clean cooking facilities. More than 95% of these people are either in sub-Saharan Africa or in developing regions of Asia, and around 80% are in rural areas.
Our databases provide invaluable information not only regarding the current energy access situation but also the means to base projections to assist in the effort to increase energy access. Under the WEO’s central scenario, the number of people without access to electricity declines to around 810 million in 2030 and 550 million in 2040 (6% of the global population at that time). The most recent WEO estimates that $13.1 billion in capital investment was directed worldwide in 2013 to improving access to electricity and clean cooking facilities, with the lion’s share going to increase generation capacity or to extend transmission and distribution networks.
The IEA has long advocated making global energy access a priority, and applauded the inclusion in the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations of the goal to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”. The IEA co-led with the World Bank the 2015 edition of the UN Secretary-General’s Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative’s Global Tracking Framework, a key step in the initiative’s work to galvanise and enhance global efforts to increase energy access.
What technological breakthroughs will make a big change in the field of production and storage of renewable energy?
Significantly reducing the cost of electricity storage in small and mid-size installations would of course significantly help integrate more variable renewables such as wind power and solar photovoltaics in the grid. However, deployment of renewables is less dependent on a revolution in storage than most people believe.
First of all, electricity storage itself is less constrained that you might think, wherever geography allows for use of already proven and effective pumped-storage hydropower, in which water is raised and then lowered through turbines to store electricity quite efficiently. And, again contrary to common belief, there is still significant room to expand that and other existing storage technologies when the need becomes really crucial.
But the integration of variable renewables rests mainly on a variety of tools that increase the flexibility of power systems, including demand side management. Grid extension and interconnections play a very important role. Similarly, new technologies will appear that significantly reduce the cost of wind, solar and other renewable sources, or increase their value for the grid and the economy. One recent example is wind turbines with more regular output but the same current costs.
What are your hopes for the development of renewables in the future?
Our various scenarios all show a big future for renewables. In the next five years they will represent two-thirds of net additions to power capacity worldwide. By 2050, if we are serious about mitigating climate change, they would generate 65% to 80% of the world’s electricity. We have even considered greater levels of ambition, for example in our 2011 publication Solar Energy Perspectives, which laid out a pathway for renewables to power most — if not 100% — of the global economy. They would do so by generating the lion’s share of electricity. Along with some other forms of renewables such as solar heat or biofuel, that power would then largely substitute for fossil fuel use in heat and transport.
But while we have the resources and the required technologies, and even as they continue to improve, such a “sunny” scenario will happen only with the right policy as well as trust from industry and finance and the support of the population.
Interview by Anne-Sophie Garrigou
