Tracking sectoral progress in the deep decarbonisation of energy systems in Europe

Abstract

Decarbonisation of energy systems requires deep structural change. The purpose of this research was to analyse the rates of change taking place in the energy systems of each Member State of the European Union (EU), and the EU in aggregate, in the light of the EU's climate change mitigation objectives. Trends on indicators such as sectoral activity levels and composition, energy intensity, and carbon intensity of energy were compared with decadal benchmarks derived from deep decarbonisation scenarios. The methodology applied provides a useful and informative approach to tracking decarbonisation of energy systems. The results show that while the EU has made significant progress in decarbonising its energy system. On a number of indicators assessed the results show that a significant acceleration from historical levels is required in order to reach the rates of change seen on the future benchmarks for deep decarbonisation. The methodology applied provides an example of how the research community and international organisations could complement the transparency mechanism developed by the Paris Agreement on climate change, to improve understanding of progress toward low-carbon energy systems.

Long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies for achieving the 1.5 °C target – insights from a comparison of German bottom-up energy scenarios

“…14. Similar findings of insufficient progress in various areas of the energy transition were recently derived for Europe as a whole [18]. 15.…”

“…bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, BECCS) will be needed [17]. To achieve these developments, increased efforts and sustained political commitment will be required [18].…”

Achievability of the Paris targets in the EU—the role of demand-side-driven mitigation in different types of scenarios

“…When we carry out the same comparison for the national scenarios considered here, we find similar but on average slightly larger gaps, with the maximum gap between annual reductions of 2.7 percentage points for the end-use sectors and a gap of 4.4 percentage points for electricity supply. The differences reflect that the overall reduction of carbon emissions is only slightly higher than 80% in the scenarios in Spencer et al (2017). In all cases, the gaps between current trends and required rates show how challenging it is to realize the corresponding mitigation pathways.…”

“…scenarios to the historical trends for the same countries considered here. While the mean annual reductions of sectoral energy intensities and the carbon intensity of electricity since 2000 range from 0.5 to 1.8%, the sectoral carbon intensities have only reduced by 0.3 to 0.6% on average per year (Spencer et al 2017). When comparing these sectoral trends to the required rates in 2020-2030, they find substantial gaps with regard to the median intensities in the end-use sectors, with the biggest gap of 2.3 percentage points per year for the carbon intensity of residential buildings.…”

Implementation of EU energy policy priorities in the Baltic Sea Region countries: Sustainability assessment based on neutrosophic MULTIMOORA method

“…The EU has set ambitious objectives to decarbonise its economy and cut GHG emissions at least 80% by 2050. Scientific studies show that reaching such reductions requires enormous structural changes to energy systems (OECD/IEA, IRENA, 2017;Spencer et al, 2015;Bataille et al, 2016;Spencer et al, 2017). Now the mid-term target is to reduce GHG emissions by at least 20% compared to 1990 levels by 2020 is reached.…”