Cop 28 goals ‘feasible’ with right conditions: IEA

Goals agreed by nearly 200 countries at the UN Cop 28 climate summit in 2023 — to treble renewables and double energy efficiency by 2030 — are "feasible with the right enabling conditions", energy watchdog the IEA said today.

Those targets could "on their own, get the world fully two-thirds of the way to a Paris-aligned energy system by 2030", the IEA said. The Paris climate agreement seeks to limit global warming to "well below" 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and preferably to 1.5°C.

But reaching those goals "will hinge on additional international efforts", including countries ramping up ambition in the next round of national climate plans, which are due for submission by early 2025. Today's report from the IEA "can serve as a guidebook for turning countries' collective pledges into action", it said.

Countries agreed at Cop 28 to treble global renewable energy capacity to at least 11TW by 2030. This is "within reach thanks to favourable economics, ample manufacturing potential and strong policies", the IEA said. But countries will need to "build and modernise" 25mn km of electricity grids by 2030, and reach 1.5TW of energy storage capacity by 2030, it added. Of that, 1.2TW must come from battery storage, a 15-fold increase on current levels, the report found.

The incoming president of Cop 29, Azerbaijan's Mukhtar Babayev, has placed grids and storage in the spotlight. His recently disclosed pledges for this year's summit include one that matches the IEA's recommendation on energy storage, plus seeks to add or refurbish at least 80mn km of grids by 2040.

Doubling energy efficiency by 2030 "looks far out of reach under today's policy settings", the IEA said. Hitting that goal could reduce global energy costs by nearly 10pc, it said. Advanced economies should focus on electrification, as electric vehicles and heat pumps are "two- to five-times more efficient than their fossil fuel equivalents", the report found.

Emerging markets should strengthen and enforce efficiency standards for new buildings and appliances, while switching from traditional cookstoves to "clean cooking" could save "save more energy annually than the current energy demand of Brazil", the IEA said.

But finance is an obstacle.

"Clean energy investment is skewed", the IEA said, with the vast majority going to advanced economies and China. The report suggested "stronger and more stable policies to attract private investment", and "more sizable, more targeted and more catalytic international support".

The IEA pointed to the new climate finance goal, to be decided at Cop 29, as a key spur.

The report recommended "inefficient fossil fuel subsidies" be phased out.

"At a time when governments are concerned about the social acceptance of transitions, the fact that globally they spend nine times more making fossil fuels cheaper than they do on clean energy subsidies for consumers is a striking discrepancy", it said.

Clear fossil fuel transition policies are necessary, and can "help to set market expectations", the IEA said. New unabated coal plants should not be approved, while "a significant number" of existing coal plants should be retired early.

By Georgia Gratton