Keywords

FormalPara Interviewees

  • Asanga Abeyagoonasekera

  • Magnus Brunner

  • Soulaima Gourani

  • Tristan Lecomte

  • Mark Turrell

“A nation that can’t control its energy sources can’t control its fuutre”.—Barack Obama

1 Introduction

The energy sector accounts for three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions presently, and consequently, efforts to mitigate the consequences of climate change rely massively on improving the condition of our energy consumption, production and transportation. While many declarations for net-zero futures have been made, it requires a lot of efforts at a global level to actually achieve that target. When we aggregate all the countries who have pledged to reach net-zero emission futures, it accounts for almost 70% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Even current pledges are not enough for global net-zero emissions, and it would require a lot of political will and policy nous to reach that target. People will be key stakeholders in this process as a lot of hope of a sustainable future also relies on consumer choices and behavioural decisions such as purchasing electric vehicles, installing energy-efficient technologies in households, using small solar power panels for sustainable energy production, and using sustainable means of transport like walking, cycling, or public transportation.

When we talk of a net-zero future, one thing is clear, it will have to primarily be a result of better sources of energy and better usage of energy. The amount of energy required for the future is very unlikely to reduce; indeed most experts agree that the world will continue needing more of it. As developing and underdeveloped countries experience economic progress, their energy demands will move closer to that of developed countries right now. The developed countries on the other hand are unlikely to reduce their energy consumption, with the best hopes being that their demand stabilizes. In addition, population growth is bound to keep increasing energy demand. The world population is predicted to stabilize around 10 billion eventually, and till 2050, it is bound to keep increasing. Consequently, both the gross consumption of energy and per capita consumption of energy will increase across the world. This makes it necessary for us to find cleaner sources of energy, as well as create technologies which are more efficient at using that energy with minimal wastage, in order for us to reduce the resources required to support the planet’s energy needs. In that context, we consider some of the broad trends that will move us towards a net-zero future. This includes the trends in global demand of energy, existing patterns of movement towards sustainable energy and predictions of their preponderance by 2050, and plausible improvements in technology that make energy consumption more efficient. These predictions are based on current and historical trends and are therefore always suscept to massive and unexpected disruptions, technological or demographic, which can never be ruled out as a part of human history and future. However, these provide benchmark models that help understand the current trajectory of the world and the possibility of reaching a net-zero world by 2050.

Some of the broad trends that are predicted to realize by 2050 are listed below. The extent to which these developments and technologies become widespread by then will determine how close the world reaches to a net-zero target, with the most optimistic scenario of fully achieving it not being completely unrealistic and more realistic scenarios also managing to make significant progress towards clean energy.

  • Global energy demand will continue rising at an average annual growth rate to 2% with most of the increased demand coming from South Asian and African countries which experience significant economic growth during these three decades.

  • Population growth and economic growth in non-Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries will mean that their share of global energy demand and global GDP begins reflecting their share of world population better, whereas the OECD countries are overrepresented in these metrics right now.

  • Most of the increased demand of energy will be in the form of electricity, and efficiency in electricity production, storage and transportation will become absolutely crucial.

  • Almost 77% of new energy demand is predicted to be met using solar and wind energy production, with some help from biofuels and nuclear energy.

  • Even in the baseline, non-optimistic scenarios of things continuing mostly as they are, renewable energy is predicted to account for 27% of the world’s energy consumption in 2050, primarily driven by governmental policies and technological innovations.

  • Without significant leaps in clean energy production, storage and transmission, natural gas will retain its share in energy usage due to its lower relative price compared to renewable energy technology and its stability which means weather patterns cannot cause disruptions in its supply.

  • The realization of a net-zero future requires the adding capacity for 630 GW of solar power and 390 GW of wind power generation every year, mass electrification of vehicles to increase electric vehicles’ share of global sales from around 5% presently to 60% by 2050 and significant improvement in energy storage and transmission.

  • Specifically, development of long-duration energy storage technologies is crucial to make solar and wind power stable sources of energy which are not massively disrupted by weather patterns. Developing extensive power grids that cover large areas will also be necessary to ensure regions can substitute for each other in power production.

  • Carbon capture, storage and use technologies will be very important and promoted through government taxation, in order to get private industries to also adopt them.

2 Global Energy Demand in 2050

Global energy demand is bound to continue growing; however, McKinsey predicts that the growth will not be as rapid as it has been during the last 15–20 years when energy demand grew at an average of 2%. The major factors that will contribute to slowing down the growth will be that population growth will also be much slower, and global economic growth will stagnate and mainly be concentrated in a few non-OECD countries. Another crucial part of slower growth in energy demand will be the preponderance of the service industry. In most countries, services are becoming the most prominent part of the economy already, and a continuation of this trend would mean countries extracting most of their GDP from services rather than industry. This helps temper energy consumption because industries are the most energy-consuming parts of the economy, while services only come in second.

The average estimates of energy demand growth put it at around 0.7%, which is much slower than historic trends but is also expected given that is it simply not feasible for global energy demand to keep growing linearly. The World Energy Council estimates that global total energy primary supply increased 45% between 1990 and 2010, when it was 546 exajoules. Further progress meant that it grew 6% to 581 in 2019 before crashing due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. However, slower growth in energy consumption is already happening, and the World Energy Council predicts it will increase to 879 exajoules if driven purely by market forces and to 696 exajoules if driven mainly by social planning. Consequently, the actual figure is likely to lie between these two extremes as social planning for energy consumption becomes more and more important yet does not substitute market forces entirely.

The main driver of growing energy consumption by 2050 is inevitably going to be regional economic growth. The US Energy Information Administration (IEA) estimates that non-OECD countries in Asia will be the most rapidly progressing nations led by India, whose growth is purported to be the greatest. Beyond India, the rest of non-OECD Asia including China, as well as African countries, will be leaders of economic growth. China’s growth is bound to slow from the current rates, but nonetheless, it will maintain a healthy growth lead over OECD countries with saturated economies. These areas already account for almost 70% of the world’s population while only making up for 44% of its GDP in 2020. The future will see convergence in these figures with the population share slightly growing to 73% but GDP share increasing significantly to 59% of the world’s GDP, more in line with their population share. While the share of OECD countries’ energy usage has been much higher than their population historically, this trend will change, and non-OECD countries’ energy consumption will come to represent their share of the world population in the future.

Within Asia, India is supposed to make up for most of the economic growth as it reaps dividends of its young demographics and human capital, while current high-growth countries like China witness their growth slowing down in line with the development experiences of the West. Similarly, more advanced Asian economies like Japan and South Korea will also demonstrate slow economic growth, with Japan particularly struggling to deal with an aging population using technological interventions. The pandemic has already begun processes of companies diversifying their supply chains so as to not be wholly reliant on China. These trends will become more prominent as the preponderance of Chinese goods reduces with other lower-income countries like Vietnam, Mexico, Bangladesh and China filling in for the gap.

Sectoral analysis shows that demand for electricity will grow twice as fast as that for transport with the two biggest economic gainers, India and China, making up for 71% of new capacities. McKinsey predicts that electricity will account for 25% of all energy demanded by 2050 while right now that figure stands at 18%. The trends so far show that the future increase in energy demand will primarily come from electricity demand rather than petroleum demand. Petroleum demand increase will mainly be industrial, and transportation-related, sectors which are invariably somewhat dependent on petroleum-related energy. However, much of residential and commercial energy demand will come from electricity, which is a considerable opportunity as renewable energy sources can possibly substitute for fossil fuels in satisfying this demand.

3 Sources of Energy by 2050: Baseline Scenario

The future is predicted to be increasingly powered by renewable energy, but the extent to which renewable energy takes over from fossil fuels remains to be seen. There are many different estimates and cases for what could happen, but even the most optimistic cases do not completely rule out the use of coal and natural gas, which might remain necessities in some industries. Nonetheless, McKinsey predicts that 77% of the world’s new capacity for energy generation will come from solar and wind energy, a further 13% from natural gas which has grown in importance over the last five to six decades, and the shares of nuclear and hydro energy will also modestly increase. Though the share of oil in the world’s energy generation has not increased substantially over the last few decades, but that of natural gas and coal have increased substantially, natural gas reserves are still being discovered so it remains quite likely that it will account for more and more of future production of energy, as McKinsey predicts. However, coal’s growth is likely to be constrained by the implausibility of finding large amounts of new coal reserves with many countries like India and China already experiencing coal production crisis. One of the other reasons for coal’s share of energy to fall will be its vulnerability to climate change-related stressors such as erratic weather patterns which can significantly disrupt coal production processes. Hydro, solar and wind still account for very little of the world’s energy production which is a trend that will change in the future as growth of renewable energy becomes exponential rather than incremental.

When it comes to the profile of global energy generation in 2050, there are many different estimates ranging from very hopeful to dire. One of the less optimistic, yet perhaps realistic, predictions come from the IEA’s analysis of current trends continuing without major disruptions. They predict that while the share of renewables will more than double in the next three decades, it will grow to substitute the share of production that is presently dependent on coal, with petroleum retaining its importance as a global energy consumption source and natural gas and nuclear energy also increasing to a certain degree. While it is encouraging that the only significant growth is being done by renewable energy, the crucial challenge remains according to IEA’s analysis, that the amount of energy required from petroleum and natural gas will slightly increase. This causes two major challenges for the world: these sources are major contributors to climate change and global warming and continued use of them without significant improvements in efficiency of production and consumption could lead to disastrous outcomes for the climate, and the total stock of these resources available to us is limited and the only way to make it last sustainably is to reduce its consumption which is unlikely to happen.

IEA’s analysis argues that renewable energy will account for 27% of the world’s energy consumption in 2050, driven mainly by governmental policies that promote renewable energy sources as well as technological innovations in this space. On the other hand, natural gas is predicted to almost retain its share in energy use, mainly because the IEA argues that lower relative prices of natural gas compared to renewable energy, as well as its stability which allows it to be a backup supplier of energy to the more erratically available renewable sources, will drive its demand in the future. On the other hand, petroleum and liquid fuel will retain its share of energy consumption mainly through industry rather than residential demand. The transport energy still remains significantly dependent on liquid fuels, and areas like aviation and shipping are still some ways from discovering feasible alternatives. Additionally, the production of chemical fertilizers and feedstocks also depends on industrial petroleum usage, and this demand is unlikely to decline in the near future.

4 Sources of Energy by 2050: Optimistic Scenarios

However, the business-as-usual prediction by the IEA is not the only analysis by any means. There are many other reports and papers that take different scenarios of technological innovation, global cooperation and social initiatives towards renewable energy, to come up with different predictions for the future. Researchers from Stanford collated 47 different peer-reviewed research papers by 91 authors from across the world which analysed country-specific or region-specific scenarios for whether it is possible to rely entirely on renewable energy in the future by 2050. Their conclusion broadly was that across various scenarios and geographies, it is possible for the world to supply energy reliably using 100%, or at least very close to 100%, renewable energy. Certainly, these scenarios involve a lot of cooperation, technological innovation and political will at the national and international level to be executed. Nonetheless, it offers a glimpse of the best-case scenarios which remain achievable with sufficient coordination. The report argues that Green New Deal roadmaps for 143 countries which account for 99.7% of the world’s population are feasible and the progress under them can be rapid enough that 80% of the world’s energy is renewable by 2030 itself. Such scenarios also have very positive health externalities as it could eliminate the 4–7 million deaths that occur worldwide every year due to pollution and climate change.

The researchers from Stanford divided the earth into 24 broad regions, with the idea that every region can work on large energy grids that would stretch across countries and ensure that if one part of the grid is experiencing insufficient renewable energy production, another part will be able to compensate for it. Creating large enough grids provides implicit insurance against shocks to renewable energy production in one area because there would be some parts of the grid at least which are not affected. Even countries in the Middle East, which are currently famously reliant on their fossil fuel stocks, have massive potential to switch completely to renewable energy, as they have massive potential of harnessing solar power. One of the major challenges to renewable energy right now, which the World Economic Forum’s analysis agrees with, is that the erratic and unstable nature of renewable energy production makes it necessary to rely on energy storage to smoothen out the supply of energy across days, weeks or even months.

A similar analysis, carried out with an optimistic outlook, is IEA’s attempt to analyse the policies and innovations required to reach a net-zero future by 2050. Their report recognizes the difficult challenge of reaching net-zero emissions but argues that with enough political will and appropriate policy decisions, it is possible to reach that target. Technological innovations are at the core of any push towards a net-zero future, as major improvements in energy storage technology, transmission grids and energy efficiency are needed. Electricity needs to become the medium through which the world interacts with energy as it remains the most feasible route through which human demands can be met using sustainable resources. Solar and wind energy needs to be ramped up massively, with IEA estimating that the world needs to add capacity for 630 gigawatts of solar photovoltaic power and 390 gigawatts of wind power generation every year till 2030. Electrification is also crucial in that electric vehicles must become preponderant and industries which rely on fossil fuels need to shift to electric energy inputs. The only caveat will remain with respect to chemical manufacturing industries that rely on petroleum for which substitutes can be found through synthetic materials, but the plausibility of that remains uncertain. Electric vehicles make up for around 5% of global vehicle sales and need to be pushed to at least 60% of annual vehicle sales by 2030. Right now, electric vehicles account for less than 1% of total vehicles. Given the average life cycles of vehicles, it is imperative that a majority of vehicles purchased post 2025 need to be electric, with near universal adoption by 2050. This also depends on improving charging networks to make charging stations available across every country and region, and further, it is important for battery technologies to evolve enough to sustain long-distance travels on single charges. We discuss these and other technological innovations that are necessary for a sustainable future in the next section.

5 Technological Progress for a Net-Zero Future

The question of how far the world can move towards a net-zero reality by 2050 is effectively a question of how far can innovation and technological progress take us? The evolution of power storage and distribution mechanisms, efficiency of energy consumption systems and utilizing our emissions to generate power are all pieces of the puzzle that unlocks a net-zero reality. Some of these innovations are things we are already aware of and are working towards achieving. Certainly, human innovation is boundless, and it is entirely plausible that the innovations of the next few decades far exceed our imagination. This section mainly presents a brief review of the technological progress already being made and what it could mean for sustainable energy.

5.1 Long-Duration Energy Storage

Long-duration energy storage is one of the crucial parts of the puzzle towards shifting energy usage to renewable resources. The major sources of renewable energy are solar and wind energy which are by definition irregular and erratic. Wind and solar energy production happen sporadically through the day and are also often localized in specific regions. Consequently, for any country or region, it is important to have energy storage which can conserve energy for a long period such that it can be produced in large quantities whenever solar and wind power are available and then slowly released for public consumption. For renewable energy to succeed, it is crucial to develop long-duration energy storage technologies and markets alongside it. In that regard, government intervention to ensure that both energy production and storage progress together is essential. These energy storage systems have the purpose of storing large amounts of energy for long durations of times, up to a few weeks at least. While demand for energy is relatively stable across days sand weeks, with some changes associated with winter and summer cycles, the production of energy from solar and wind resources significantly varies according to weather conditions and climactic conditions. There is already significant progress being made in this regard as capacity for more than 5 gigawatts and 65 gigawatt hours has already been developed and made operational.

In the long term, however, much progress remains to be made. The energy storage capacities will have to increase to 1.5 to 2.5 terawatts of capacity, or 85 to 140 terawatt-hours such that it can create a buffer of at least 10% of global electricity consumption. Consequently, this would also require trillions of dollars in investment, from the private or public sector. At the same time, it also helps avoid many gigatons of excess carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere, with estimates ranging between 1.5 and 2.3 gigatons. McKinsey estimates that in the United States, these long-duration energy storage systems could reduce the costs associated with decarbonizing power systems by $35 billion every year. Once deployed, the running costs for these systems are fairly low as they are scalable, and the main costs are the initial investment into developing and deploying of new storage facilities. Higher adoption of renewable energy will increase the demand for long-duration energy systems, and their deployment will in turn reduce the costs associated with renewable electricity as well as make its delivery more efficient. Consequently, government policy must promote innovation of long-duration energy storage (LDES) systems such that when renewable energy production scales up, the complementary technologies are available to facilitate its efficient delivery. United Kingdom’s government has already launched a $100 million LDES demonstration competition, while in the United States, a $1 billion program is working to reduce costs of LDES systems. Such initiatives are required at a global scale, and whenever a country makes breakthroughs, it is crucial to enable international adoption of those technologies in order to reach decarbonization goals.

5.2 Distributed Variable Generation of Energy

A related technological innovation to long-duration energy storage is developing grids across large expanses of land which can facilitate distributed variable generation of energy such that areas which have more energy generation at one point can transmit it to other areas, with the idea that at least some part of the grid will be able to produce power at any given point of time. Power grids right now are very localized and do not spread over countries or regions, which limits the ability for one part of the grid to compensate other parts where production is lower. Further, power generation from solar and wind can often exceed the capacity of networks to carry the energy to areas where it is being demanded, leading to wastage. Larger power grids will enable energy to be distributed efficiently and smoothly and enable creation of local marketplaces where resources can be effectively utilized, and energy can be traded. Data farming technologies can streamline the process of developing distributed energy generation maps and patterns by simulating various scenarios. Large-scale simulations can help identify key vulnerabilities of any power grids, as well as the optimum size and scale of power grids which will help prevent complete shutdown of energy generation in the grid, while ensuring the size is not too large such that even one part of the grid can power the entire grid in times of crisis. Such simulations can also help determine the parts of the grid which are most vulnerable, and those which are most reliable, using historical data about weather and wind patterns. Data farming is already being used to simulate climate change scenarios and similar models can be adapted to test optimum policies for distributed variable energy generation. The upgradation of power grids is, in many ways, an extremely urgent matter because it can take decades for the complete grid to be overhauled and upgraded.

5.3 Carbon Capture and Storage Technologies

Carbon capture and storage is considered to be a very important part of limiting global warming and having net-zero emissions worldwide. The specific policies and technologies which are used for carbon capturing will need to be localized according to specific geographical demands including terrains, altitudes, and weather patterns. It essentially involves capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide, or more commonly, carbon dioxide being released by various combustion and energy consumption processes, such that it can be converted to other productive uses later rather than letting it join the atmosphere. Alternatively, carbon capturing can also lead to carbon storage in underground facilities to simply prevent it from escaping into the atmosphere. Already in 2020, it has been used to capture approximately 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide globally, but it needs to scale up by around 100 times by 2050 to help achieve decarbonization and net-zero emission targets. Some of the important developments needed by 2050 are development of low-cost power generation technologies that utilize carbon capture, prices of carbon dioxide be sufficiently high to justify the costs associated with capturing and transporting it, both industry and electricity generation using carbon dioxide such that the economies of scale can help reduce associated costs while increasing interlinkages and efficiency of usage. Carbon capture systems have immense potential as they can capture up to 80–90% of the carbon dioxide emissions from thermal power plants, and even though the energy system benefits might be small, there will be significant benefits when it comes to mitigating global warming. This is one area where private mechanisms are very unlikely to yield desired results. Government intervention can be subtle; even by simply creating a carbon tax for carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere can be used to encourage industries to use carbon capture technologies. More direct interventions like investing into carbon capture technologies and publicly funded carbon capture systems are also possibly useful policies.

5.4 Evolution of Batteries

When we talk about electrification of households, cars and industries, a major component of that is also upgrading batteries such that their capacities are sufficient for our needs. Modern-day batteries are themselves innovations but still require a lot of volume for storing energy. One major problem with existing electric cars is also that battery capacities are not sufficient for these cars to travel long distances, and they require regular charging. To that effect, battery innovation is a key facet of electric car manufacturing and has gotten a lot of attention. Buses are already running in European cities like Glasgow fueled by batteries but adapting that for large-scale consumer vehicles requires making high-capacity batteries much more compact. Battery innovations already being worked on include faster charging, more capacity and longer lives and this trend is encouraging, and with decent, very plausible progress, the future of transportation is one of electric vehicles powered by high-capacity, fast-charging electrical batteries. In laboratory settings, many successful innovations already exist like “solid-state” lithium-ion batteries which can shrink battery sizes while maintaining capacities by replacing liquid electrolytes with solid electrolytes and exploring the possibility of batteries made of alternatives apart from lithium-ion.

Another evolution that is crucial for the feasibility of widespread use of electric vehicles is the development of charging stations placed at reasonable distances from each other. Vehicles themselves would have to be fitted with smart technology that can analyse the distance it can travel before needing a recharge and the closest recharge points available for use. Additionally, the network of charging points will itself require a very large power grid that covers every part of every country, with no exceptions. Right now, many parts of the world have very erratic access to electricity, or no access at all. To make electric vehicles feasible, it is necessary that power grids themselves become ubiquitous and cover every part of the country. This will in turn also allow for more regular charging stations, which can also practically be much smaller than an average gas station as they require lesser space as they no longer need to store large amounts of petroleum products underground and can simply tap into running power lines and, with a simple charging converter, be ready for use. Further, these charging points will also be fully automated, perhaps powered by smartphones, or simply through unique IDs attached to vehicles such that there is no need to deploy people or cash collection systems. This will reduce costs significantly and also make it much more feasible to have such charging stations in the remotest parts of the country where they remain available for use without needing anyone to constantly guard them. The future of refueling electric vehicles, therefore, is one of automation and ubiquitous availability.

5.5 Hyperlocal Energy Production

While storing and transporting energy across regions, countries and large power grids will be crucial, another aspect that is necessary for sustainable development of energy use is also localized energy productions. High energy density solar panels are already being used in many parts of the world and can be used to produce on-site energy for various building compounds, hotels, hospitals, manufacturing units, industrial units and so on. Replacing traditional solar panels with high energy density panels can allow for much higher production such that these institutions are able to create their own energy to a certain extent, with power gridlines working to supplement local energy creation, especially when local conditions are not amenable to solar or wind energy. Places like manufacturing units also emanate a lot of heat which can itself be harnessed to create energy, as a method of recycling by-products of energy usage for more energy creation. This process of reducing heat wastage has immense potential to create somewhat self-sufficient industrial units and entities.

5.6 Moore’s Law for Clean Technology?

In 1965, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel and Fairchild Semiconductor, posited that the number of transistors on a microchip will double every year, and more than five decades later, that proposition still holds true, and technology has seen exponential improvements, driven in a large part by the increasing power and efficiency of microchips. When it comes to clean technology, while one aspect of the so-called ‘Moore’s law’ has held and growth has been strong and sustained, it has by no means been as large or exponential as in the case of semiconductors. While transistor technology has seen improvements of almost 40% every year, for clean energy, it has lingered around just 8–9% even though the first silicon solar panels were introduced more than 50 years ago and have been around just longer than Moore’s prediction.

The reasons for Moore’s law to not hold for clean technology are many, but the major simple cause is because clean energy technology including storage and solar panels does not have the characteristics which made Moore’s law pertinent. Semiconductors in microchips were only bound by human lithographic technology and always had the potential of being made smaller and closer to each other, in order to reduce the size required for a particular level of computing. As we got better at creating microchips, they could become more powerful and smaller all the time. On the other hand, batteries are restricted by the fact that they require ions to transfer charge, which are often larger than electrons and require more space. While microchip technology improvements were linear in a sense in that they kept making the chips smaller by making the transistors smaller, reducing gaps between them and so on, clean energy technology often requires new materials and technologies entirely in order to progress. The current battery technology is limited by the chemical processes that underlie the transmission of energy, and a more efficient or smaller battery would require a completely new chemical process to support it. This is one other reason why progress in battery technology has been much slower than what was observed for semiconductors.

Another crucial reason why progress in clean energy technology has been slower is that for most part of the last 50 years, it has had very little funding and the focus has not been put on improving these technologies. Progress in clean energy technology often comes from experience, as more and more production leads to better understanding of the technology and where it can be made more efficient. As the world looks towards clean energy to fight climate change and build a more sustainable future, more funds will be pumped into research and development, and the industry will also gain more experience in building storage and production technologies for clean energy. These are bound to give results, and we are likely to see improved growth in the future, albeit it might still not be exponential in the way Moore predicted. Efforts in this regard are already underway, with one such example being the Joint Centre for Energy Storage Research, which aims to improve energy storage density by five times, and also bring down costs by a factor of five. These efforts, powered by public funding, underline the hopes for the future of clean energy technology.

6 Policy Pathway to a Net-Zero Reality

The target to achieve net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 is consistent with one of the most pressing global challenges, limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 °C. It would require significant increases in clean energy adoption and ambitions from what has currently been declared by carious governments. Carbon emissions need to fall by at least 40% in the next 10 years to have hope for a completely net-zero emission reality by 2050. All of this will need to be achieved in the face of a doubling of the global GDP and an increase of 25–30% in the world’s population by almost 2 billion. The use of coal, oil and other fossil fuels will have to be reduced by at least 90% in the case of coal and 55% for natural gas in order to have emissions which can sustainably be captured and now allowed to become greenhouse gases. Major technological innovations are needed for clean energy production, storage and transmission. Consequently, investment in the energy sector will also need to be at least doubled in the next 10 years and then should keep growing sustainably till 2050. The transition to clean energy is also necessarily a matter of behavioural change as people need to adopt more sustainable practices, and the availability of clean energy is very much dependent on technological changes. Failure in these aspects would make it extremely difficult to achieve a net-zero emission future. Even the most optimistic scenarios do not envision a future with zero use of fossil fuels, and so carbon capture systems would also be essential to ensure that their emissions are managed sustainably and not released. Effectively, while the current trajectory of the world is not headed for a net-zero future, there is still some hope in that the pledges announced by governments are much closer to that reality, and if policymaking can adroitly guide the world towards those pledges, it is not completely unconceivable that the future of the world is one of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Many countries have already declared long-term net-zero greenhouse gas emission target. The countries which have pledged net-zero emissions already make up for almost 70% of global GDP and carbon dioxide emissions. The challenge is translating pledges into proper domestic and international policy, as only a quarter of the countries with net-zero pledges have incorporated their commitment into domestic legislation. If the world were to only follow current policies with no enhancement, it would lead to annual carbon dioxide emissions rising from 34 gigatons to 36 gigatons by 2030 and then remaining stable at that level till 2050. This would be consistent with a global temperature rise of around 2.7 °C by 2100 and is mainly a consequence of relatively less predicted adoption of clean energy according to already stated national policies. However, if we consider the pledges made by global governments and assume that they will be fulfilled through proper policymaking, the global carbon dioxide emissions are stated to fall to 30 gigatons by 2030 and 22 gigatons in 2050, with renewable energy making up for 70% of global energy production by 2050. The main challenge for clean energy still is rapid development such that it can replace coal, oil and other fossil fuels. Nuclear, hydrogen, bioenergy, solar and wind will all play a role in various parts of the world depending on local resource availability and needs. While the current net-zero pledges are encouraging in that they will almost be sufficient to reach a net-zero reality, there is much work that remains to be done in policymaking to ensure that these pledges become realities. This will include policies to encourage rapid evolution of current power grids, coupled with the use of big data to monitor and manage them, such that their storage and transmission capabilities are sufficiently flexible in both supply and demand of energy. Further, while vehicles will somewhat naturally be replaced, old infrastructure, buildings and equipment will need to be replaced or retrofit with more efficient energy technology to prevent loss of energy due to inefficient technologies. The markets should be encouraged to adopt clean energy through interventions like nudge-based taxation, providing common networks and public infrastructure that reduces costs of clean technology like carbon capture and creating new markets for things like resilient, clean energy power grids. It is absolutely crucial that governments begin putting in a lot of funds into revamping their power grids immediately because while the development of clean energy is happening through the private market, efficient mechanisms to transmit and store clean energy are not aspects private markets can address or are currently working on.

7 Input from Interviewees

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera

Foreign policy specialist; founding director general of the Institute of National Security Studies Sri Lanka

New technology and new inventions for extractions will impact the future of energy, while figuring out how to protect ocean and other natural resources.

Magnus Brunner

Austrian Minister of Finance

Thanks to investments in clean solutions as well as breakthrough technologies by innovative companies and not to say the least, thanks to the unprecedented cooperation between politics, businesses and the wider population, we successfully managed to drastically reduce our CO2 emissions while simultaneously increasing our prosperity and quality of life.

Furthermore, an intact environment and an innovative economy were achieved through market-based incentives and technology rather than prohibitions. The Republic of Austria also contributed to redirecting money towards climate-friendly investments not only by the regulative framework, but also by switching to and issuing green bonds and green loans. Nobody was left behind. Thus, the acceptance among the population for the transformation towards a climate-neutral future was and remains high.

Renewable energy has replaced fossil fuels; hydrogen, electricity and synthetic fuels gradually drove out petrol and diesel; and our industry competitively produces goods that are in demand worldwide, as all regions attempt to achieve the goals set out by the Paris Agreement. The ‘Energiewende’ as we often call it even in English, or perhaps more strikingly, the low-carbon energy transformation was a central challenge for the Austrian society and our economic system in particular – and while it was challenging, it was a tremendous success story and both humankind and our planet benefit from it.

Soulaima Gourani

Entrepreneur, author and keynote speaker; CEO and co-founder of Happioh

Green growth societies will become a reality in many countries. A lot of countries will aim to become independent from wooden fuel, coal, oil and gas. One of the biggest changes is that big cities will grow while small societies will shrink.

Tristan Lecomte

Chief executive officer, Pur Projet

One invention that I want to see in 50 years is new source of energy—new fuel, like water for cars.

Mark Turrell

Strategist, educator, entrepreneur; founder and CEO of Orasci

Technology is developing in such a pace that new energy sources will always be found. Just look at computer history: magnetic storage, modems in 1980s. Storage of data has been growing exponentially. We are used to do what we used to do.