Energy efficiency needs 4% growth to meet 2050 Net-zero emissions, says IEA

The International Energy Agency stated that increasing the current rate of energy intensity improvement from 2 percent to 4 percent per year over the next decade is required to meet the IEA Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario.
This is a key measure of the economy’s energy efficiency, according to the Agency in its 7th Annual Global Conference on Energy Efficiency titled “The value of urgent action on energy efficiency.”

“Compared to the case with current policy settings, this has the potential to avoid 95 exajoule (EJ) a year of final energy consumption; equivalent to the current final energy consumption of China.”

The report showed that in this high efficiency scenario, with each unit of energy delivering more than it does today, final energy demand could be 5 percent lower by 2030 while serving a 40 percent larger economy.

“Achieving this hinge on a global push on energy efficiency and related avoided energy demand measures including electrification, behaviour change, digitalisation and material efficiency in industry.

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“Slower action would lock-in higher energy consumption for years to come,” it stated. “Such a step-up of action could reduce CO2 emissions by an additional five Gt per year by 2030, compared with current policy settings.”
This represents roughly one-third of the total emission reductions required this decade under the IEA’s Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario.

According to the agency, achieving 95 EJ of energy savings per year by 2030 helps avoid nearly 30 million barrels of oil per day, which is roughly triple Russia’s average production in 2021.
“And 650 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas per year, around four times what the European Union imported from Russia in 2021,” it said.

This shift in global effort includes providing clean, efficient cooking and heating to all those who currently lack it.
“This would avoid over 20 EJ demand for the traditional use of biomass – such as wood and charcoal – in 2030 compared with current policies, dramatically improving the lives of billions of people.

“For example, household air pollution is linked to around 2.5 million premature deaths a year, with women and children most affected,” the IEA cited.
Energy efficiency gains have already made a large contribution to constraining the growth in greenhouse gas emissions.
“Without the global energy intensity gains of the last two decades, emissions growth would have been almost double, or about 8 Gt per year higher in 2019.”