Current:Home > MarketsThat $3 Trillion-a-Year Clean Energy Transformation? It’s Already Underway. -WealthSphere Pro
That $3 Trillion-a-Year Clean Energy Transformation? It’s Already Underway.
View
Date:2025-04-15 03:13:09
To keep global warming in check, the world will have to invest an average of around $3 trillion a year over the next three decades in transforming its energy supply systems, a new United Nations climate science report says. It won’t be cheap, but it’s also a change that’s already underway.
Much of that investment is money that would be spent on energy systems anyway. Instead of continuing to invest it in fossil fuel-based energy that worsens global warming and can harm human health, the report provides a pathway for shifting those investments to clean energy.
The landmark report, released Oct. 8 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sums up years of research into the risks to people and ecosystems if global temperatures rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, and it looks at how to stop that from happening. The planet has already warmed about 1°C, and it’s gaining about 0.2°C every decade, the report says.
Keeping warming under 1.5°C will require a near complete shift from today’s dependence on fossil fuels to a world powered almost entirely by clean energy, the IPCC says.
That transformation will require a global investment in clean energy and infrastructure of $1.6 trillion to $3.8 trillion a year (in 2010 U.S. dollars), with an average of about $3 trillion to $3.5 trillion a year from 2016 to 2050, the IPCC says. That compares to an estimated $2.4 trillion a year that would otherwise be invested in energy systems.
On a 1.5°C pathway, clean energy investments would overtake fossil fuel investments by about 2025, and all investments in coal that lack carbon capture and storage technology would be halted by around 2030.
“It’s not necessarily asking for some new pot of money to be magically created, but it’s a redirection from investment in fossil fuels to efficiency and renewables,” said Drew Shindell, a professor of climate science at Duke University and a coordinating lead author on the IPCC report.
Ramping Up Renewable Energy and Efficiency
Global investments in wind and solar, which currently total approximately $250 billion per year, would need to be increased several fold to meet the 1.5°C target, Laszlo Varro, chief economist with the International Energy Agency, said.
“The energy that you get from this $250 billion investment buys you the equivalent of one percent of global electric demand,” Varro said. “But global electricity demand is growing at 2 percent per year, so you don’t even catch the growth of global electricity consumption let alone [achieve] rapid decarbonizing.“
Energy efficiency efforts that stem the growth of energy demand will also play a key role in limiting future warming. That includes better-insulated homes that require less energy because they lose less heat, more efficient heating and appliances, and lighting like LEDs that require a fraction of the power of old conventional light bulbs.
“We simply don’t believe that it is possible to have a copy-paste transition from the high carbon age to the low carbon age,” Varro said. “You also have to reduce total energy consumption.”
At the same time, entire sectors of the global economy like transportation and heating will have to transition off of fossil fuels and onto electricity powered by renewables or other zero-emissions sources of energy, something Varro calls the “electrify everything strategy.”
“The two most important things in this is electric cars in transportation and electric heat pumps in building heating and industrial heat,” he said.
One key area that would require new sources of funding is energy efficiency, which could come through carbon pricing or other government regulations, the report says.
Such measures demonstrate the scale and urgency of the energy transformation that will be required, Varro said. “The IPCC was very clear that the impacts of high warming is the equivalent of a national emergency, but at a planetary scale.”
Companies Finding Benefits in the Transition
Some of these changes are happening now, led in part by corporations that have recognized the costs fossil fuel emissions and climate change create for their supply chains in the future. Corporate giants including Google and Apple, for example, purchase enough renewable energy to cover 100 percent of their power needs.
The research and sustainability advocacy group Ceres has been working with companies and large investors for years to help them understand both the risks to their portfolios from high-carbon sources and the opportunities of investing in cleaner infrastructure as renewable energy prices fall.
Ceres argued in a report released earlier this year that achieving a “clean trillion” in additional annual investment in clean energy and infrastructure is “eminently feasible.” Alongside the environmental and health benefits of reducing pollution, it highlighted some of the financial benefits from clean energy infrastructure, such wind or solar projects that can provide stable, long-term returns on the investment.
“We are in an all-hands-on-deck situation that requires transformational change in the public and private sectors, the likes of which the world has never seen,” Sue Reid, Ceres’ vice president for climate and energy programs, said after the IPCC report came out. “Fortunately, we already have at hand a range of tools that are needed—from clean energy technologies to effective policy models—to get us there.”
veryGood! (481)
Related
- John Galliano out at Maison Margiela, capping year of fashion designer musical chairs
- Both parties rally supporters as voting begins in Virginia’s closely watched legislative elections
- Some providers are dropping gender-affirming care for kids even in cases where it’s legal
- Lizzo facing new lawsuit from former employee alleging harassment, discrimination
- Intellectuals vs. The Internet
- Things to know about California’s new proposed rules for insurance companies
- Want a place on the UN stage? Leaders of divided nations must first get past this gatekeeper
- Some providers are dropping gender-affirming care for kids even in cases where it’s legal
- Whoopi Goldberg is delightfully vile as Miss Hannigan in ‘Annie’ stage return
- After overdose death, police find secret door to fentanyl at Niño Divino daycare in Bronx
Ranking
- Warm inflation data keep S&P 500, Dow, Nasdaq under wraps before Fed meeting next week
- Zelenskyy to speak before Canadian Parliament in his campaign to shore up support for Ukraine
- Talk about inflation: a $10,000 Great Depression-era bill just sold for $480,000
- Hurricane forecasters expect tropical cyclone to hit swath of East Coast with wind, rain
- North Carolina trustees approve Bill Belichick’s deal ahead of introductory news conference
- Christian McCaffrey and the 49ers win 13th straight in the regular season, beat the Giants 30-12
- Migrants arriving on US streets share joy, woes: Reporter's notebook
- Puerto Rico National Guard helps fight large landfill fire in US Virgin Islands
Recommendation
Angelina Jolie nearly fainted making Maria Callas movie: 'My body wasn’t strong enough'
Teenager arrested after starting massive 28-acre fire when setting off fireworks
Nicki Minaj's husband Kenneth Petty placed on house arrest after threatening Offset in video
Amazon to run ads with Prime Video shows — unless you pay more
See you latte: Starbucks plans to cut 30% of its menu
Surgeons perform second pig heart transplant, trying to save a dying man
What we know about Atlanta man's death at hands of police
Bus carrying Farmingdale High School band crashes in New York's Orange County; 2 adults dead, multiple injuries reported