“We must halve energy use to avoid climate catastrophe:” UNSW

A new study published Thursday by the University of New South Wales Sydney has declared that global energy consumption must be halved if the world is to avoid “climate catastrophe”.

According to the new research, recently published in the journal Climate Policy, renewable energy deployment is progressing at speed, but it is not happening fast enough to solve the climate crisis.

That’s because its growth is being outstripped by a parallel increase in total energy consumption which is primarily being driven by fossil fuels in areas like transportation and heating.

And while energy usage did decline slightly during 2020 due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the demand has unsurprisingly since returned. As such, in addition to increasing renewable energy capacity, we also need to reduce global energy consumption.

“We have a situation where renewable electricity and total energy consumption are growing quite rapidly alongside one another,” said Mark Diesendorf, author of the study and Honorary Associate Professor at the School of Humanities & Languages, UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture.

“So renewables are chasing a retreating target that keeps getting further away.

“The research shows it is simply impossible for renewable energy to overtake that retreating target. And that’s no fault of renewable energy. It’s the fault of the growth in consumption and the fact that action has been left too late.”

The research modelled different energy-use scenarios for reducing global energy-related CO2 emissions down to zero by 2050.

The stark conclusion was that to keep global heating below 1.5°C without overshoot by 2050, global CO2 emissions must decline by around half by 2030 and total energy consumption itself needs to halve over the next three decades (based on 2019 levels).

Specifically, according to the research abstract, “to reduce energy-related emissions to at least half the 2019 level by 2030 en route to zero or near-zero CO₂ emissions by 2050, either [total primary energy supply (TPES)] must be reduced to at least half its 2019 value by 2050 or impossibly rapid reductions must be made in the [fossil fuels (FF)] fraction of supply, given current technological options.”

One of the issues, according to Diesendorf, is that the renewable energy transition is fighting a battle against time.

“There is no doubt that we could transition to 100% renewable energy and that it would be affordable,” said Diesendorf. “Technologies such as wind and solar continue to get cheaper. The problem is replacing all fossil fuels as the demand for energy consumption keeps growing.”

Governments around the world have made strides towards transitioning to a 100% renewable energy system, but many technological policies are not designed to simultaneously reduce energy consumption. Further, many of these policies rely on unproven and speculative technologies like CO2 capture.

In place of policies relying solely on scaling up renewable energy capacity, Diesendorf explains that climate change will not be solved without a concomitant social change to curb energy consumption.

“To make the rapid transition, we will need to supplement the technological changes,” said Diesendorf. “We need to start reducing global energy consumption now, which means we need to make necessary social and economic changes.”

The research concludes that, “Reduction in energy consumption likely entails economic degrowth in high-income countries, driven by policies that are socioeconomic, cultural and political, in addition to technological.”

But while a target of halving global energy consumption sounds drastic at best, impossible at worst, Diesendorf nevertheless believes it is within reach, with the right approach to policy.

“We would only need to go to the levels [of energy use] of a few decades back with the smarter and cleaner technologies of today,” he said.

“It does not mean going back to living in caves. But it does mean abandoning the belief of conventional economics that eternal growth is possible on a planet with finite resources.

“If energy consumption is reduced, it’s likely that economic consumption will also go down. But there are many things that governments could do to ensure that it will not inconvenience people, provided the right incentives are given.”

Specific policy options include environmental and carbon taxes, wealth and inheritance taxes, a shorter working week, job guarantees and increased government expenditure on poverty reduction, and green infrastructure and services like public transportation and social housing.

“Having a set of universal basic services would mean there is less demand for very high-income jobs, which correspond to very high energy consumption,” Diesendorf explains.

“I think the best thing people can do is demand that governments and other political parties get serious…because time has run out.”