Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
6/27/2014
An increase in electricity demand must be addressed on the path to a low-carbon future Didier Houssin, director of Sustainable Energy Policy and Technology for the International Energy Agency said during an event hosted by the Center for Strategic International Studies this week. Houssin’s presentation was based on data presented in the IEA’s Energy Technology Perspectives (ETP) 2014 report released last month. “We do think that electricity is going to play a defining role in this first half of the century.” Houssin said, stating further that taking appropriate steps to meet these demands is important. “It’s important also to get it right and to decarbonize the electricity sector. A number of options are available with renewables, nuclear power and [Carbon Capture and Storage] upgrades just to name a few. But again, the challenge is great and a number of policies will need to be put in place to decarbonize electricity generation.”
As presented in the report, in the IEA 2 degree scenario in which the temperature of the world is kept from increasing more than 2 degrees, it is projected that the use of fossil fuels will eventually decrease with an increase in the use of renewables. However, even in this scenario, fossil fuels account for 20 percent of the energy generation in 2050, the end-point for the scenario. Most of that 20 percent, according the report, would have to be fossil fuel plants with CCS.
Electricity demand will be affected by things as simple as an increase in the use of electronic devices Houssin explained, many of which use electricity at surprising rates just to stay connected to the network. “They spend most their time in stand-by mode, up to 80 percent of the electricity consumption is just to maintain connection to the network … we have estimated that demands of electricity of this equipment could be slashed by two thirds just by implementing best practices of available technologies. This would result in savings corresponding to 4 percent of total final energy consumption today. It’s a massive stake which is often overlooked.”
North America, Houssin said, will have to cut back on fossil fuel generation even more than many areas of the world to meet the 2 degree scenario in the report. “What is striking [in North America] is like in [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries, growth in global electricity demand is much lower than the global averages, and at the same time we have a shift to low carbon generation but in the near term we see that the impact of shale gas revolutions mean that the role of natural gas will be increasing at least in the short to medium term and in the longer term we see also a shift away from fossil fuel electricity generation even larger than for the global averages.”
Shift to Gas, Development of CCS Necessary
Gas will serve as a bridge to lower carbon generation sources in the coming years Houssin said, but without CCS it will be unsustainable. “In all our scenarios we see the role of gas increasing by 2025 through fuel switching from coal to gas and the development of gas in many regions. After 2025 the carbon content of gas is too high compared to the objective of [the 2 degree scenario] to be maintained without CCS. So, we see a decline in the role of gas for the later part of the period and gas needs to be used as a base-load option just with CCS and this is why we have undertaken a comparison of the costs and benefits of applying CCS to coal and to gas-fired generation. Usually CCS is analyzed in the context of coal-fired generation and it’s true that the cost per ton of [carbon dioxide] is higher for gas than for coal but if we compare the cost of low emissions electricity production gas is more attractive than coal-fired generation including with CCS.”
