Energy Goals and Targets of the Sustainability Transition

There is a large body of literature on different types of objectives for sustainable development that addresses the environmental and social, Table 17.1 | Branching points and GEA pathways.

Branching point 1:

What is the level of energy demand?

GEA-Effi ciency (low demand) GEA-Supply (high demand)

Full portfolio (all options) Restricted portfolio

as well as the economic, dimensions of sustainability (Hirschberg et al., 2007 ; Vera and Langlois, 2007 ). This section does not intend to be comprehensive with respect to all these dimensions but instead focuses on the main energy challenges, and thus on selected objectives that are directly or indirectly affected by energy use. The targets identified here thus refer only to the necessary changes in local and global energy systems; much more is required in other sectors of societies for overall sustainability to be realized.

The definition of the targets builds upon the assessment of the objec-tives presented in the chapters of Cluster I of this report. Their selection has, to the extent possible, been guided by agreements and aspirations expressed by the international community or by United Nations actions and resolutions.

The targets are of central importance, since they define the ambitious-ness and the magnitude and pace of the required transformation. The targets are thus major drivers of the pathways, defining the policy

stringency and portfolio of measures to respond to the energy chal-lenges (see Sections 17.3 to 17.7 ). The model-based assessment in this chapter focuses predominantly on the technological feasibility, required policies, and associated costs and benefits of reaching the targets. The political feasibility of the assessed pathways will depend, in addition, on whether international and regional agreements for the implementation of the policies are put in place (see Chapters 22 and 26).

Table 17.2 summarizes the main target levels. These are used in the analysis of pathways to sustainability as the main boundary conditions or formal constraints in the integrated assessment modeling frame-works MESSAGE and IMAGE (see Box 17.2 ). The targets are defined in quantitative terms and prescribe a specific time schedule for meeting certain goals. They cover goals for all four principal energy challenges:

energy access, air pollution and health, climate change, and energy security. In addition to these goals, the GEA also adopted adequate energy services to support economic growth as a normative goal (see Chapter 6 ).

High demand

Intermediate demand

Low demand

GEA-Mix

Branching point:

Efficiency

Branching point:

Transportation

Branching point:

Supply

Conventional Transport

Advanced Transport

Conventional Transport

Advanced Transport

Conventional Transport

Advanced Transport

n=2

n=6

n=6

n=7

n=10

n=10

Supply-side Flexibility Demand-side Flexibility Feasible supply-side transitions

(primary energy by 2050)

n = number of f easible pathways (≤ 10)

Figure 17.3 | Schematic illustration of the GEA pathways and the three branching points. The scenario setup features alternative choices for the combination of demand-side effi ciency improvements and supply-side transformations, describing alternative policy emphases that would enable the transformation of the energy system. The pie charts represent primary energy portfolios of feasible transformation pathways under different branching point assumptions.

Box 17.2 | Scenario Development Process

The GEA scenarios were developed in parallel by two integrated assessment modeling frameworks and through an iterative and participatory process so as to achieve integration across various chapters of the GEA. Figure 17.4 illustrates the scenario development process, showing the fl ow of information from individual chapters to the scenario development team and the iterations across various knowledge clusters.

Important inputs to the GEA scenarios include quantitative technoeconomic information such as technology costs, energy resources, and potentials provided by other GEA clusters. In addition, a series of workshops and a scenario questionnaire were prepared by the GEA writing team and external experts to solicit input for defi ning the main characteristics of the GEA scenario taxonomy and the set of objectives for a sustainable energy system with specifi c targets and timelines. These inputs are used by two modeling frameworks for the development of the GEA pathways:

Table 17.2 | Targets for the four main energy challenges and key characteristics of the corresponding transition pathways. In addition to these targets, the GEA also adopted adequate energy services to support economic growth as a normative goal (see Chapter 6 ).

Objective/Goal Target and timeline Pathway characteristics Further details

Improve energy access Almost universal access to electricity and clean cooking fuels by 2030 (see also Chapters 2 and 19 )

Diffusion of clean and effi cient cooking fuels and appliances.

Extension of both high-voltage electricity grids and decentralized microgrids.

Increased fi nancial assistance from industrialized countries to support clean energy infrastructure.

Section 17.4

Reduce air pollution to improve human health

Achieve global compliance with WHO air quality guidelines (annual PM2.5 concentration

< 10 μg/m³) for the majority of the world population, and the remaining populations staying well within the WHO Tier I-III levels (15–35 μg/m³) by 2030 (see also Chapters 3 and 4 )

Tightening of air pollution legislation across all energy sectors (e.g., vehicles, shipping, power generation, industrial processes).

Decarbonization to support pollutant emissions controls.

Fuel switching from traditional biomass to modern energy forms for cooking in developing countries.

Section 17.5.2, 17.7

Avoid dangerous climate change

Limit global average temperature change to 2°C above preindustrial levels with a likelihood

> 50% (see also Chapter 3 )

Widespread diffusion of zero- and low-carbon energy supply technologies, with substantial reductions in energy intensity.

Global energy-related CO ₂ emissions peak by 2020, are reduced to 30–70% of 2000 levels by 2050, and approach almost zero or negative levels in the very long term.

Globally comprehensive mitigation efforts covering all major emitters .

Financial transfers from industrialized countries to support decarbonization .

Section 17.5.1, 17.7

Improve energy security Limit energy trade; increase diversity and resilience of energy supply (both by 2050; see also Chapter 5 )

Increase in domestic energy supply options (e.g., renewables to provide 30–75% of primary energy by 2050), and reduction of the share of oil in global energy trade from the present 75% to under 40% (and no other fuel assumes a similarly dominant position).

Increase in diversity of energy supply as well as all endues sectors and regions by 2050.

Infrastructure expansion and upgrades to support interconnections and backup, including increased capacity reserves, stockpiles, and energy storage technologies.

Section 17.6, 17.7

Note: For further details see Section 17.3 .

MESSAGE (Model for Energy Supply Strategy Alternatives and their General Environmental Impact) is a systems engineering optimization model used for medium- to long-term energy system planning, energy policy analysis, and scenario development (Messner and

Strubegger, 1995 ; Riahi et al., 2007 ). The model provides a framework for representing an energy system with all its interdependencies from resource extraction, imports and exports, conversion, transport, and distribution to the provision of energy end-use services such as light, space heating and cooling, industrial production processes, and transportation. The framework covers all GHG-emitting sectors, including agriculture, forestry, energy, and industrial sources, for a full basket of greenhouse gases and other radiatively active gases:

CO 2 , methane, nitrous oxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, black carbon and organic carbon, tetrafl uoromethane, hexafl uoroethane, various hydrofl uorocarbons (HFC125, HFC134a, HFC143a, HFC227ea, HFC245ca), and sulfur hexafl uoride. MESSAGE is used in conjunction with MAGICC (Model for Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change) version 5.3 (Wigley and Raper, 2001 ) for calculating internally consistent scenarios for atmospheric concentrations, radiative forcing, annual-mean global surface air temperature, and global-mean sea level implications.

IMAGE is an integrated assessment modeling framework consisting of a set of linked and integrated models (Bouwman et al., 2006 ).

Together the framework describes important elements in the long-term dynamics of global environmental change, such as air pollution, climate change, and land use change. Important subcomponents of the model are the global energy model TIMER, the land use and land cover submodels of IMAGE, the detailed description of the carbon cycle, and the MAGICC 6.0 (Meinshausen et al., 2009 ) model that is included as the climate model within IMAGE. The model focuses on several dynamic relationships within the energy system, such as inertia, learning-by-doing, depletion, and trade among the different regions. Technological choices are made on the basis of relative costs (using multinomial logit equations). The land cover submodels in the earth system simulate the change in land use and land cover at a resolution of 0.5 × 0.5 degrees (driven by demands for food, timber and biofuels, and changes in climate). The earth system also includes a natural vegetation model to compute changes in vegetation in response to climate change feedbacks from changes in temperature, precipitation, and atmospheric CO 2 concentrations.

Both models use a set of harmonized assumptions about future drivers of change (including targets) to generate the GEA pathways.

Many of these drivers are specifi ed externally to the modeling frameworks and were provided by other chapters of the GEA report ( Table 17.3 ). The pathways thus also aim to integrate information (e.g., on resources, technologies, costs) provided elsewhere in the GEA.

Although the models were applied to develop the three illustrative pathways within each of the pathways groups, the assessment relies on the strengths of the individual models with respect to specifi c sensitivity analysis. For instance, both models explored the sensitivity of the results with respect to energy access; however, the assessment mostly builds upon simulations from IMAGE for detailed land use projections and mainly uses the MESSAGE model to explore supply-side fl exibility and to calculate pollutant emissions. The atmospheric chemistry and dispersion modeling for the assessment of health impacts from air pollution were conducted with the TM5 model hosted

Iterations Participatory

Process for Scenario Taxonomy

GEA Indicators (targets)

Models:

IMAGE MESSAGE

Inputs from other Chapters (costs, potentials,

technology, etc..) incl. uncertainties

GEA-Supply GEA-Mix GEA-Efficiency qualitative

quantitative quan + qual

GEA Pathways

Sensitivity Analysis

On specific issues

Iterations

Policy Chapters

Figure 17.4 | The GEA scenario development process.

at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (Dentener et al., 2006 ; Stevenson, 2006 ; Kinne et al., 2006 ; Textor et al., 2007 ; Bergamaschi et al., 2007 ). As with any model-based assessment, any specifi c conclusions are conditional on the applied methods and assumptions.

Detailed scenario data for the individual GEA pathways are publicly available in the GEA database at www.iiasa.ac.at/web-apps/

ene/geadb. The GEA database provides interactive features for data visualization and a user interface for the download of scenario information in different formats.

Table 17.3 | Model structure and assumptions used to generate GEA pathways.

Examples of externally specified or harmonized variables across models

Constraints on model outputs or

“boundary conditions” for least-cost model solutions

Examples of internally generated or “endogenous”

model outcomes

Population growth Energy access target Diffusion of supply-side technology options and their shares in primary energy

Reference economic growth Environmental impact targets

Reference energy intensity improvements Energy security targets Demand-side portfolios and fuel consumption

Resource availability and costs Price-induced changes in energy demand

Technology availability and costs Changes in land use and land cover

Exposure to pollutant emissions Energy system investments

Costs of alternative policy packages for energy access, environment, and security

Costs of emissions reductions Carbon price

Because the GEA objectives are strongly normative, the targets are all designed to be ambitious. The elaborated GEA pathways suggest that all the targets can be reached, if appropriate policies are introduced and energy investments are scaled up considerably. Table 17.2 lists some gen-eral characteristics of the GEA pathways as influenced by each of the objectives.

The target of ensuring almost universal access to electricity and clean cooking by 2030 ³ is driven by the current reliance of a large fraction of the population in developing countries on traditional biomass to sat-isfy basic energy needs. Their lack of access to electricity and to afford-able and clean fuels for cooking has vast impacts on human health, productivity, and land conservation. Section 17.4 presents a compre-hensive analysis of the combinations of policies that can achieve the GEA goal of universal access by 2030. Specific focus is given to micro-credits or grants to finance appliances as well as subsidies to improve the affordability of clean fuels for cooking. In addition, the same sec-tion assesses the need for infrastructure investments for transmissions

and distribution networks to connect the rural poor to the grid (see also Chapters 2 and 19 ).

The target of reducing air pollution in compliance with WHO (World Health Organization) air quality guidelines ⁴ by 2030 is explored in depth in Section 17.5.2 through a bottom-up, technology-based assessment of main measures across main pollutant emissions sources and sectors.

Many countries around the world have adopted antipollution legislation and have specific plans for further implementation of legislation in the short term. As the analysis in Section 17.5.2 indicates, however, current legislative plans in the aggregate are not sufficient to achieve the GEA target. Hence, a major focus of that section is on identifying specific policy levers for individual sectors and regions, and the associated costs, to deliver further improvements consistent with the overall objective (see also Chapter 4 ).

3 The target is “almost universal access” because reaching the remotest rural populations is exceedingly expensive.

4 The WHO air quality guidelines are given for an annual PM2.5 concentration

< 10 μg/m ³ . In the GEA pathways the majority of the population meets this guide-line by 2030, while the remaining populations stay well within the WHO Tier I-III levels of 15–35 μg/m ³ .

With respect to climate change, the GEA adopts the target of limiting global average temperature change to 2 ° C above preindustrial levels with a likelihood of more than 50% . ⁵ This target is consistent with various scientific assessments of the increasing risk of climate-related impacts above that threshold (Smith et al., 2009 ) as well as with EU and UN policy recommendations (European Commission, 2007 ; United Nations Conference of the Parties, 2009 ). Such a global target calls for globally comprehensive and stringent GHG emissions reductions.

Section 17.5.1 analyzes the required emissions pathways, measures to reduce emissions, costs, and equity implications of the transition (see also Chapter 3 ).

Last but not least, the GEA objective of improving energy security is achieved partly as a convenient co-benefit of decarbonization, which is illustrated in the GEA transition through two related objectives on limiting energy trade across major importing regions and increasing the diversity and resilience of energy supply . Although many different types of energy security indicators are summarized in the literature (e.g., Jansen et al., 2004 ; Scheepers et al., 2007 ; Kruyt et al., 2009 ; Sovacool, 2009 ; Sovacool and Brown, 2010 ), the GEA uses a relatively simple dual taxonomy to define security: sovereignty of the energy system based on the degree of energy trade, and resilience based on the degree of diversity of types of energy sources. The sovereignty dimension is incor-porated by limiting energy trade as a fraction of total primary energy at a regional scale (discussed in Section 17.7 ). Although the resilience dimension is not a direct limitation in the GEA pathways, the analysis in Section 17.6 shows that diversity increases in all energy subsystems (total primary energy supply, fuel supply for end uses, and regional mixes). Section 17.6 elaborates on these indicators and on the differ-ent strategies to improve energy security and their implications for the transition (see also Chapter 5 ).

Without policies to enable the sustainability transformation, the energy system would continue its heavy reliance on fossil fuels. This is illus-trated by the hypothetical no-policy baseline (counterfactual) of the GEA, which describes the evolution of the energy system in absence of any transformational policies to meet the GEA objectives. In the GEA counterfactual fossil fuels more than double their contribution by 2050 (reaching about 900 EJ). As a consequence greenhouse gas emissions would continue to grow at present rates for many decades to come, leading to an average global mean temperature change of about 5°C in the long term. Increasing use of fossil fuels would also increase import dependency and worsen energy security, particularly in resource poor regions in Asia. Lack of incentives to strengthen policies to control the emissions of air pollutants would result in an increase of outdoor

air-pollution induced health impacts from 23 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost globally in 2005 to more than 33–40 million by 2030. In addition, the lack of financing for clean cooking fuels and elec-tricity for the poor would leave the energy access problem unresolved, leading to health impacts from household fuel pollution of about 40 million DALYs by 2030.

Changing the energy system to support sustainable development requires thus dedicated policies so that all the GEA goals are met con-currently. Hence, a major focus of the assessment is to explore inte-grated and holistic solutions that take into account potential trade-offs and help to identify synergies from achieving all the different objectives simultaneously. These are discussed in detail in Section 17.7 .

Im Dokument Chapter 17: Energy pathways for sustainable development (Seite 11-16)