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In preparation for their 1998 Plenary meeting, the members of the IEA’s Coal Industry Advisory Board prepared individual papers addressing the key issues facing the coal industry at this challenging time. The result is a collection of unique perceptions on the future role of coal from the leaders of the industry. They provide a valuable, first-hand insight into the views and concerns of the coal industry as it faces a rapidly changing market due to: ? uncertainties within the electricity generating industry, which in turn are a result of the continuing transition to a liberalised electricity market and of unanswered questions about the final structure, shape and regulatory framework of this market; ? increasing environmental commitments by governments, especially in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. Coal, with its ample, cost-effective and geographically diverse reserves, has traditionally been a major factor in energy security and price stability. Is this important role now under threat? How does the coal industry itself see its market evolving? What are the industry’s views of the role of coal in a future where carbon emissions are strictly limited? Important questions with thought-provoking responses in this challenging collection of individual papers from the IEA’s Coal Industry Advisory Board.
Using air conditioners and electric fans to stay cool accounts for nearly 20% of the total electricity used in buildings around the world today. Rising demand for space cooling is also putting enormous strain on electricity systems in many countries, as well as driving up emissions. Absent firm policy interventions, there is no doubt that global demand for space cooling and the energy needed to provide it will continue to grow for decades to come. However, there is an enormous opportunity to quickly influence the growth of cooling-related energy demand through policies to improve equipment efficiency. This special IEA report aims to raise awareness globally about one of the most critical energy issues of our time, outlining a sustainable path to the future of cooling that will allow people to reap the benefits of cooling without straining the energy system or the environment.
The People’s Republic of China had the fastest growth in space cooling energy consumption worldwide in the last two decades, driven by increasing income and growing demand for thermal comfort. This report explores the principal trends and challenges related to this rapid growth, looking into existing market developments, policies, technology choices and occupant behaviour in buildings in China. It then looks at how cooling demand in buildings might evolve over the next decade to 2030 and considers what China can do to ensure greater cooling comfort without parallel growth in energy consumption and related emissions. The report recommends raising energy performance standards for cooling equipment, tapping into building design opportunities, and ensuring that “part time” and “part space” behaviour remains the principal cooling mode in buildings. These strategies, among others, will reduce the impact of rising cooling demand on China’s electricity system, unlocking benefits in terms of reduced power capacity investments, lower energy and maintenance costs, improved air quality, and greater access to cooling comfort.
Heat pumps, powered by low-emissions electricity, are the central technology in the global transition to secure and sustainable heating. This report, provides an outlook for heat pumps, identifying key opportunities to accelerate their deployment. It also highlights the major barriers and policy solutions, and explores the implications of an accelerated uptake of heat pumps for energy security, consumers’ energy bills, employment and efforts to tackle climate change.Around 10% of space heating needs globally were met by heat pumps in 2021, but the pace of installation is growing rapidly with sales at record levels. Government policy support is needed, though, to help consumers overcome heat pumps’ higher upfront costs relative to alternatives. Financial incentives for heat pumps are already available in over 30 countries, which together cover more than 70% of heating demand today. The IEA estimates heat pumps globally have the potential to reduce global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by at least 500 million tonnes in 2030 – equal to the annual CO2 emissions of all cars in Europe today.
Hydrogen and energy have a long shared history – powering the first internal combustion engines over 200 years ago to becoming an integral part of the modern refining industry. It is light, storable, energy-dense, and produces no direct emissions of pollutants or greenhouse gases. But for hydrogen to make a significant contribution to clean energy transitions, it needs to be adopted in sectors where it is almost completely absent, such as transport, buildings and power generation.
The Future of Hydrogen provides an extensive and independent survey of hydrogen that lays out where things stand now; the ways in which hydrogen can help to achieve a clean, secure and affordable energy future; and how we can go about realising its potential.
Global demand for transport is growing fast. On present trends, passenger and freight activity will more than double by 2050.
Such growth is a token of social and economic progress. But it carries with it growth in energy demand and in emissions of CO2 and atmospheric pollutants.
Greater reliance on rail can cut that growth. The world is becoming ever more urbanised and rail travel is well matched to urban needs.
High-speed rail can serve as an alternative to short-distance air travel. Conventional and freight rail can complement other transport modes to provide efficient mobility.
This book shows what can be done and how. Its scale is global, with a special focus on the needs and opportunities in India.
The road freight sector is both a key enabler of economic activity and a key source of energy demand, in particular oil. Trucks rely almost exclusively on oil-based fuels. They are the second largest source of global oil demand, following passenger cars and at a similar level as the entire industry sector. Road freight is the largest source of global diesel demand, at around half of the global total. With this high dependency of trucks on oil come environmental concerns. Globally, more than one-third of transport-related CO2 emissions, and 7% of total energy-related CO2, come from road freight transport.
This report outlines the ways in which vehicle efficiency technologies, systemic improvements in logistics and supply chain operations, and alternative fuels can ensure that road freight transport will continue to support economic growth while meeting key energy and environmental policy objectives.
Volume II of the History of the International Energy Agency takes up the energy policies and actions of the Agency during its first twenty years, from 1974 to 1994 inclusive. While the weak institutional situation of the industrial countries in the 1973-1974 crisis period made it all but impossible for them to adopt decisive and effective responses, when the time for action came, the reasons for their vulnerability to the oil producer countries were perhaps less their underdeveloped institutions than their essentially optimistic and passive oil management policies during the years preceding the crisis. Other policy choices which might have prevented or softened the crisis were available to them, as Volume II shows.
The IEA’s basic institutional arrangements remain essentially as described in Volume I of The History, but this Supplement’s extensive treatment of budget and programme of work issues reflects significant changes in Agency practice, during a period when governments were engrossed in the management and financing of international organisations generally.
Volume I of this History surveys at some length the institutional origins of the International Energy Agency in the 1973-1974 oil crisis, and examines the 1974 I.E.P. Agreement and other oil consumer actions which established the Agency as an operational intergovernmental institution. Volume I also considers the most important IEA relationships, the internal structure of the Agency, and the institutional arrangements which enabled the Agency to develop over the years into an effective instrument for energy policy co-operation among its Members.
Energy use patterns and trends are shaped by the decisions of hundreds of millions of individuals, households, and organisations. Understanding this complex fabric of energy use, and the consequent carbon dioxide emissions, is vital to developing effective policies in support of energy security, economic prosperity, and environmental protection. This book illustrates how indicators can extract from that fabric the most important links among energy uses, behaviour, the economy, and government policy. It explains how energy use has evolved in the past and what is influencing it now, and provides insights on what could shape it in the future. This represents an important step in better understanding the link between energy use and human activity.
All low-carbon solutions will be required to achieve the world's net zero targets. Nuclear energy has a role to play in meeting this need. A wave of innovation in small modular reactors (SMRs) is advancing quickly with the potential to help decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors. Progress is real and is positioned to accelerate pathways to net zero. SMRs could replace coal on-grid, fossil fuel cogeneration of heat and power for heavy industry, diesel at off-grid mines, as well as producing hydrogen and synthetic fuels.
Looking beyond technical feasibility, The NEA SMR Dashboard defines new criteria for assessing real progress in six additional dimensions of readiness: licensing, siting, financing, supply chain, engagement, and fuel. The first volume of the NEA SMR Dashboard assessed the progress of 21 SMRs. This second volume tracks the progress of an additional 21 SMRs around the world.
The oil and gas industry is facing increasing demands to clarify the implications of energy transitions for their operations and business models, and to explain the contributions that they can make to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.
The increasing social and environmental pressures on many oil and gas companies raise complex questions about the role of these fuels in a changing energy economy, and the position of these companies in the societies in which they operate.
But the core question, against a backdrop of rising GHG emissions, is a relatively simple one: should today’s oil and gas companies be viewed only as part of the problem, or could they also be crucial in solving it?
The global oil and gas industry encompasses a large and diverse range of players: from small, specialised operators to huge national oil companies. These producers face pivotal choices about their role in the global energy system amid a worsening climate crisis fuelled in large part by their core products.
The Oil and Gas Industry in Net Zero Transitions analyses the implications and opportunities for the industry that would arise from stronger international efforts to reach energy and climate targets.
It also examines how transitions increase the likelihood of boom and bust cycles for oil and gas producer economies. It highlights strategies for producer economies that could complement broader reforms to build macroeconomic stability and the role of international partners to support this process.
The report sets out a fair and feasible way forward in which oil and gas companies and producer economies take a real stake in the clean energy economy while helping the world avoid the most severe impacts of climate change.
Thailand is committed to playing its part in the international efforts aimed at addressing climate issues. As it is for most countries, the power sector in Thailand is among the largest emitters, accounting for 38% of energy-related CO2 emissions. Hence, reducing the emissions from this sector is fundamental in reducing the country’s total emissions. This report explores the potential role of carbon pricing in driving emissions reduction in power generation and supporting a clean energy transition in the country. Building on the understanding of the current power market structure and future development plans, this report leverages on the results from in-depth 2030 power production cost modelling to assess the potential impacts of carbon pricing on power generation dispatch and investment, and the resulting implications on emissions and costs. The recommendations arising from the assessment suggest that carbon pricing can play an active role in reducing the emissions from Thailand's power sector, with measures to mitigate the potential costs and distributional impacts.
Wind power and solar photovoltaics (PV) are crucial to meeting future energy needs while decarbonising the power sector. Deployment of both technologies has expanded rapidly in recent years, one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak picture of clean energy progress. However, the inherent variability of wind power and solar PV raises unique and pressing questions. Can power systems remain reliable and cost-effective while supporting high shares of variable renewable energy (VRE)? And if so, how?
Based on a thorough review of the integration challenge, this publication gauges the economic significance of VRE integration impacts, highlights the need for a system-wide approach to integrating high shares of VRE and recommends how to achieve a cost-effective transformation of the power system.
This book summarises the results of the third phase of the Grid Integration of VRE (GIVAR) project, undertaken by the IEA over the past two years. It is rooted in a set of seven case studies, comprising 15 countries on four continents. It deepens the technical analysis of previous IEA work and lays out an analytical framework for understanding the economics of VRE integration impacts. Based on detailed modelling, the impact of high shares of VRE on total system costs is analysed. In addition, the four flexible resources which are available to facilitate VRE integration – generation, grid infrastructure, storage and demand side integration – are assessed in terms of their technical performance and cost-effectiveness.
Highly volatile electricity prices are becoming a more frequent and unwanted characteristic of modern electricity wholesale markets. But low demand elasticity, mainly the result of a lack of incentives and consumers’ inability to control demand, means that consumer behaviour is not reflected in the cost of energy.
This study analyses the impact of price-responsive demand and shows how pricing, policy and technology can be used to inform consumer behaviour and choice.
More than 27% of total carbon dioxide emissions in OECD countries is produced by the transport sector, and there are still few signs that transportation energy use is peaking. Without new action, the prospects for reductions in CO2 emissions from this sector look bleak. This report reviews transport-related CO2 abatement policies in six IEA countries: Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. The report focuses on past, recent and potential future policies and the policy context in each country. It provides a comprehensive description of selected key policy elements. A separate IEA report, which will be published early next year, will offer quantitative estimates of a major element in transport climate-change policy – the potential for reducing CO2 emissions by improving the fuel efficiency of passenger cars.
The People’s Republic of China (“China”) officially launched its national emissions trading system (ETS) in 2017, and it will come into operation in 2021. Initially covering the power sector, which accounts for over 40% of China’s energy-related CO2 emissions, the ETS is set to subsequently be expanded to other energy-intensive sectors. China’s national ETS could be an important market-based instrument to help the country meet its recently enhanced climate goals to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.
This report explores how China’s ETS can spur emissions reductions from electricity generation and support power sector transformation. It builds on understanding of power sector development and policy trends and relies on in-depth national and provincial scenario modelling of China’s power system from 2020 to 2035. This study also analyses how the ETS’s output- and rate-based design affects overall power sector emissions, technologies and costs, and regional distribution. Finally, it recommends ways China’s ETS can play a stronger role in incentivising cost-effective and structural power sector decarbonisation to support the country’s long-term climate ambitions.
Minerals are essential components in many of today’s rapidly growing clean energy technologies – from wind turbines and electricity networks to electric vehicles. Demand for these minerals will grow quickly as clean energy transitions gather pace. This new World Energy Outlook Special Report provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the complex links between these minerals and the prospects for a secure, rapid transformation of the energy sector.
Alongside a wealth of detail on mineral demand prospects under different technology and policy assumptions, it examines whether today’s mineral investments can meet the needs of a swiftly changing energy sector. It considers the task ahead to promote responsible and sustainable development of mineral resources, and offers vital insights for policy makers, including six key IEA recommendations for a new, comprehensive approach to mineral security.