Los retos del cambio climático y la transición energética

Challenges of climate change and energy transition

General information - 02/09/2023

The energy transition is key to addressing the challenges of climate change and effectively reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

What does climate change consist of?

Climate change has always existed. What is concerning is the speed at which the planet's temperature is increasing due to human action. Therefore, it is one of the greatest global challenges facing our society.

Human activity (industry, transport, electricity, agriculture and livestock breeding) generates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into the atmosphere, which cause the Earth's temperature to rise, which generates severe and irreversible economic and environmental impacts.

Due to global warming, we are experiencing more extreme weather conditions, melting glaciers and rising sea levels. These climatic conditions affect present and future generations and, consequently, are having an increasing impact on our economies, the environment and people's health and quality of life. Therefore, we are facing a global challenge on an international scale that requires global and urgent climate change solutions.

Several countries have agreed to work jointly on coordinated solutions that will help mitigate the effects of climate change and guarantee the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to stop the rise in global temperatures, as established in the Paris Agreement.

The global objective is to work towards a fair energy transition that guarantees the decarbonisation of the economy, reducing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere to reduce the rise in global temperature.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into the atmosphere have been increasing, due mainly to human action. And, more specifically, to the generation and consumption of energy of fossil origin.

According to the International Energy Agency, energy is the main contributing factor to climate change and represents around 70% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Some 90% of these emissions are CO₂, due to the combustion of fossil fuels and 9% are methane (CH₄), due to the extraction, transformation and distribution of oil and gas.

The energy sector must play a vital role to address the major global challenge of climate change, since they account for the largest number of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, followed by industry, transport, agriculture and livestock breeding. Therefore, to achieve our climate change goals, a major transformation process must be undertaken to decarbonise the economy, i.e. find new forms of energy that generate low or zero CO₂ emissions, the main greenhouse gas.

What does the energy transition consist of?

Each country, city or region is supplied with energy through its energy model. This energy mix is the combination of different primary energy sources—carbon, oil, natural gas, nuclear energy, biomass, water, solar energy and wind energy—which are used to supply the different energy needs of the population: industry, households and transport, among others.

Each energy model must guarantee universal access to energy sustainably and competitively; i.e., it must be accessible to everyone, whenever they need it, with the lowest environmental impact and a fair price. In turn, it must be capable of meeting the growing energy demand to guarantee economic development and growth in the coming years.

Each country or region has a different energy model, and several variables influence its design: proprietary energy resources (autochthonous), security of supply, energy generation capacity and environmental impact, among others. Considering these variables, each region must promote the most sustainable energy generation in economic, social and environmental terms.

At present, all energies play an important role in economic growth and the quality of people's lives, but it is necessary to change the model towards a low-carbon economy that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to address climate change.

The energy transition is the change in the energy model that will lead us to the generation of low-carbon energy generation (decarbonisation), promoting primary energy sources with minimal generation of greenhouse gases.

This requires reducing energy generation from fossil fuels and promoting other, more sustainable energy sources.

According to their needs and resources, countries are undergoing their energy transition process, including new energy sources or improving the efficiency of the current ones. This evolution towards a new energy model must involve the lowest possible cost for society, ensuring that energy continues to be affordable for everyone and preserving the economy's competitiveness.

How can the decarbonisation challenge be addressed?

Decarbonising the economy is essential and requires the transformation of various sectors, particularly the energy sector, which is transversal to all of them, but also requires a transformation in the production and consumption mode of all economic agents, companies and citizens.

The energy sector is one of the greatest emitters of CO₂, the main greenhouse gas (GHG) that contributes to global warming. The decarbonisation of the energy sector is necessary and urgent, but it must be addressed without affecting economic growth and guaranteeing universal access to energy.

The decarbonisation of the energy sector requires transformation towards a low-carbon emission generation model, promoting the inclusion of renewable energy sources that replace energy generation from fossil fuels.

Access to quality, secure energy and at affordable prices is a necessary condition for economic development and for increasing people's well-being. Thus, the major challenge is to dissociate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the evolution of the economy. Moreover, we also need to change current energy consumption patterns, which will require addressing a just energy transition for everyone.

In this context, the decarbonisation of industry is essential, since industrial activities—highly dependent on energy costs—are a major economic driver and generator of quality employment.

Aware of the need to continue moving towards an environmentally sustainable European economy, a long-term strategic vision that will help us move towards a prosperous, modern, competitive and climate-neutral economy with zero carbon emissions is necessary. A strategy in which decisive strides are made in technological fields that facilitate decarbonisation, but at the same time is endowed with an enabling framework that stimulates change.

Systematic efforts shall be required to integrate climate change and the environment in all energy policies, with a regulatory framework capable of providing timely signals for investment.

The modernisation and decarbonisation of the economy of the European Union (EU) requires a considerable increase in investment in the energy system and related infrastructure and in industry, transport, and the residential sector, which are mainly responsible for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Furthermore, this enabling framework must integrate the different governments of the Member States and, in a very active way, the commitment of companies and particularly of consumers.

Related content

The path towards an environmentally sustainable aviation

Transport is responsible for up to 28.5% of CO2 emissions in the European Union. In this segment, aviation contributes to 13% of those emissions.

To meet the decarbonisation targets for this sector and align with the Paris Agreement, it is crucial to understand the pillars of decarbonization and to quantify the reduction of emission throughout the lifecycle of aircrafts. Energy efficiency and fuels with low or zero carbon footprint are fundamental, whether for general, commercial or military aviation.

The Energy Transition Chair of the Repsol Foundation at the Polytechnic University of Madrid is organising this webinar together with Ryanair and IATA to discuss these challenges and explore innovative solutions that can accelerate the decarbonisation of air transport, contributing to a more sustainable aviation.

Event - 29 Oct 2024

Energy Transition
Regulating energy transition
Challenges posed by climate change and energy transition

Cambio climático y crecimiento, un hueso duro de roer

Climate change and growth, a tough nut to crack

There is a broad scientific consensus that we are witnessing global warming forced by the greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by human activity. Based on this evidence, young people worldwide have mobilised to demand more facts and less rhetoric and posturing from political leaders. They are not without reason, and their protest has gained a great deal of social support. The time for action has come, but are we aware of the nature and true scale of the challenge ahead?

The first step to solving a problem is to formulate it correctly. And to this end we must have present that the CO₂ emitted by human activity is related to four variables, considered on a global scale: 1) the population; 2) GDP per capita; 3) energy used per GDP unit (or energy intensity); and 4) the CO₂ emissions emitted per energy unit consumed (or carbon intensity). From the figure resulting from the multiplication of these four factors, we must subtract the amount of CO₂ that once emitted, we can remove from the air, either by natural means (for example, by avoiding deforestation and encouraging reforestation) or artificial means (using diverse engineering techniques, more or less developed and costly) that would allow CO₂ to be removed from the air and subsequently reused within the framework of a circular economy scheme.

This leads us to recognise two major components, of a very disparate nature, in the phenomenon of global warming. On the one hand, the first two factors (population and GDP per capita) are related to the current socio-economic model, which postulates unlimited demographic and economic growth, while the last two (energy intensity and carbon intensity), together with the component of removal and use of CO₂ emitted, are related to a certain energy model and level of technological development that make the objectives of demographic and economic growth possible.

We are, therefore, facing a systematic challenge, whose solution would require not only influencing (as is commonly believed) energy and technological aspects but also the current socio-economic model. A theoretical approximation that clashes with a harsh reality: the global demographic and economic trends point to continued growth in the next few decades.

In demographics, the world population is expected to reach 9.144 billion people in 2040, compared to 7.421 billion in 2016. Another particularly striking figure of these forecasts is that in 2040 64% of the world population will be concentrated in urban areas, compared to 54% in 2016; a percentage, the former, which may exceed or approach 80% in regions such as North America, Central and South America, and the EU, as well as in countries such as the US, Brazil, Russia, and Japan. We find ourselves before a process that adds to the global urban population a city the size of Singapore every four months.

And in terms of global economic growth, an average compound annual GDP growth rate of around 3.4% is expected for the period 2016-2040, with the highest growth rates concentrated in Africa (4.3%) and above all in the Asia-Pacific region (4.5%), and the lowest in the industrialised OECD countries. Another interesting element linked to the global economic growth is the forecast that the middle class will expand globally, increasing around 80% by 2030 and surpassing 5 billion people, with the majority of said growth coming from countries not part of the OECD.

Faced with the difficulty of reversing such trends, the international community has decided to focus on a new energy transition capable of decoupling economic and demographic growth from rising energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve it, we have three tools: efficiency, decarbonisation, and removal and use of CO₂. However, the global data in 2018 show that the sum of actions in these three areas has not even been able to stabilise emissions compared to 2017. The emissions continue to increase, driven by economic and demographic growth. And if that weren’t enough, in the absence of disruptive scientific and technological breakthroughs, the energy transition is unlikely to be as smooth and fast as would be desirable.

Article published in El Periódico.

Opinion article - 02/09/2023

Challenges posed by climate change and energy transition
Strategy

La transición energética requiere desacoplar crecimiento del aumento de las emisiones de dióxido de carbono, avanzar hacia la descarbonización de la economía e invertir en tecnologies y energies renovables

Energy transition. What is it?

We hear a lot about energy transition. But almost always with excessively specific or very partial approaches. It is therefore worth reflecting on the meaning of the concept in its broadest sense.

There is now a broad scientific consensus that since the industrial revolution, and particularly since the mid-20th century, humans have forced global warming beyond natural climate cycles. This means that the time has come to find ways to "regulate the thermostat" using our ingenuity and cooperative skills. The question is how. To answer this question, it is important to remember that the first step in solving a problem is to formulate it correctly. In this regard, it should not be forgotten that global warming is related to three main groups of factors: 1) socio-economic (demographic and economic growth); 2) energy model (energy intensity and carbon intensity) and 3) amount of CO2 that once emitted can be removed from the atmosphere by natural and/or technological means.

From this perspective, it is clear that global warming is an unexpected dysfunction of the current socio-economic model, of the energy model that sustains it, and of our level of technological development that prevents us from remedying the problem satisfactorily and urgently. We are facing a systemic challenge and we have to ask ourselves what we can do about it. On the one hand, we know that focusing our action on socio-economic factors is unrealistic, but on the other hand, future projections tell us that demographic and economic growth trends will contribute to increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, i.e. worsening global warming. So we have no choice but to try to compensate for this deterioration through a radical improvement in the energy model and significant, disruptive advances in technological innovation.

The energy transition therefore entails: 1) decoupling demographic and economic growth from the increase in CO₂ and other GHG emissions; 2) moving rapidly towards a low energy intensity (efficient) and decarbonised economy (driven by a low carbon mix); and 3) deploying, on a large scale, technologies that enable the removal and reuse of carbon from the atmosphere, fostering a circular CO₂ economy to convert, after economic valorisation, current waste into a resource.

An epic task that requires a grand pact or coalition, based on science and technology, including governments, financial institutions, investors, companies, and all social sectors and citizens committed to the fight against climate change.