Renewable energy is key to securing climate change progress

OVERVIEW

Despite the urgent need for climate action, the world is still extracting oil and gas (and searching for more). Activists point out that technologies like carbon capture are used to justify ongoing extraction. Renewable energy has the potential to meet the world’s growing electricity demands and offer a sustainable future. But the longer the green transition is delayed, the higher the stakes become, and the greater the temptation to resort to options like solar geoengineering whose risks are not well understood. For a just transition, it’s crucial to reverse the fossil fuel status quo, responsibly govern new climate technologies, and ensure the benefits of green energy are equitably shared.

SIGNALS

COP28 agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner. Yet many governments are still approving new coal, oil and gas projects, with public investments reaching a record high. Exxon is investing $10 billion in a new offshore oil project in Guyana, while Eni has announced a major oil discovery off Cote d’Ivoire. The UK granted 100 new North Sea oil and gas licences in 2023.

Movements like Just Stop Oil are protesting against licensing this energetic search for new sources of fossil fuels. The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed by 12 countries and 600,000+ individuals, is calling for a halt to all new coal, oil and gas projects. Activists are calling out technologies like carbon capture as a tactic to perpetuate fossil fuel extraction. Carbon removal technologies, such as Direct Air Capture, have so far had limited success despite record levels of investment. To counteract increasing youth resistance, oil companies are paying social media influencers and videogame developers – and even using children’s books - to promote fossil fuels among young people and children.

Meanwhile the range of green energy options is growing. Renewable energy is forecast to cover the world’s additional electricity demand over the next three years. Low-emissions sources (solar, wind and hydro, as well as nuclear power) should account for almost half global electricity generation by 2026. Investments are being made in green hydrogen in Mozambique and South Africa, while 40 companies worldwide are searching for viable deposits of naturally occurring (white) hydrogen.

Given the urgency to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, pressure may grow to resort to imperfectly understood options like solar geoengineering – with consequences that are hard to predict. Scientists emphasise the need for more research, as does the Overshoot Commission, which also recommended countries should adopt a moratorium on the deployment of solar radiation modification, while expanding dialogue on international governance. A UNEP expert review, too, underlined that solar radiation modification is no substitute for emissions reductions. One study showed that global south publics seem more supportive of such technological approaches, perhaps because of their younger age and level of climate urgency. Yet they are also more concerned that it could undermine climate mitigation efforts, and that its risks might fall unfairly on poor countries. In multilateral negotiations at the UN Environment Assembly, African countries called for the non-use of solar geoengineering. Mexico has banned it altogether.

SO WHAT FOR DEVELOPMENT?

Future generations need - and deserve - abundant, cheap, clean energy in order to flourish. Clean energy drives economic growth, creates jobs, connects rural and urban areas, and reduces poverty, offering opportunities to millions at risk of being left behind. Yet one in ten people still lacks electricity, mostly in rural areas of the developing world. Investing now in multiple green alternatives will broaden the options for them and for future generations, including creating up to 100 million jobs by 2030 through a green and just transition.

We need a diversity of energy technologies to get there, from technologies already deployed at scale to emerging solutions like the potential of AI. For example, decentralised energy systems – producing energy closer to where it’s consumed – can optimize the use of renewable energy, increase access to clean energy for households and communities, and reduce distribution and transmission costs. AI-driven platforms can handle vast datasets in real time, analyzing demand, grid conditions and environmental factors to optimize energy availability, efficiency and storage (though with environmental impacts of its own, given the huge quantities of energy and water AI consumes).

But technologies are not neutral.  They can have enormous - and unequal - social and economic impacts. It is not therefore enough to simply make such technologies available; how they are governed and how their benefits are shared, in ways appropriate to each community, will determine whether the green transition is also just. Those differently affected by the transition must be able to actively participate in decision-making. For example, collective intelligence is helping learn how coal mining communities in South Africa perceive the impact of the green transition on their lives, so they can contribute to decisions that take into account the potential social and economic impacts of mine closures during the transition to new energy sources.

The risks of new technologies need to be better researched and understood, and weighed against the risks of climate inaction. Multilateral cooperation around how risky technologies like solar geoengineering will be used is especially important, since they are knowledge gaps and their impacts are not geographically limited. The Montreal Protocol, that has saved earth’s ozone layer, gives us hope that multilateral cooperation can successfully address the use of earth-changing technologies.