Amidst so much bad news, our children and grandchildren can read this with pride and a glimmer of hope: by 2050, we will achieve the goal of zero emissions thanks to renewable energies.
Renewable energies are skyrocketing at exponential rates, positioning clean energy as the most likely source to power our cities and homes within two decades.
And it doesn’t stop there. The report states that the demand for fossil fuels in the energy sector has already peaked and will be in freefall by 2030uh.
“The era of fossil fuels is over,” declares the report titled X-Change: Electricity – On Track for Net Zero. The report was developed in collaboration with the Bezos Earth Fund, the NGO founded by Amazon’s founder.
Exponential growth that can save the planet
While only 12% of global electricity generation is currently sustainable, the report predicts that solar and wind power alone will reach one-third of global generation capacity by 2030.
As a result, the current demand for fossil fuels in the electricity sector is expected to decrease by 16% to 30% by the end of the decade.
According to the report’s authors, previous models assumed a linear transition to renewable energy, rather than the exponential growth observed in wind and solar energy over the past two decades. This miscalculation led these models to overestimate the continued demand for fossil fuels in the sector.
There are several factors driving this rapid and accelerated shift. Governments worldwide have united around the goal of net-zero emissions, to the extent that by 2022, 90% of the global economy had committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
Grants and targets were powerful drivers of initial growth, and now attention has shifted to regulations on grids, permits, and deployment.
Furthermore, the war in Ukraine has propelled renewable energy in Europe, as the continent has quickly come to view its dependence on Russian fossil fuel exports as a major security issue.
Technological advancements, especially in large-scale grid-level energy storage projects, have enabled an unprecedented increase in clean energy generation.
Some of the links added in the article are part of affiliate campaigns and may represent benefits for Softonic.
