INTRODUCTION
Energy demand has increased dramatically since the last century, which is evident from 20,000TWh consumption in the 1930s and 140,000TWh in 2017 (Smil, 2017). It is unimaginable to sustain a healthy, prosperous society without energy as it is the cordial part of our food systems, domestic life, industries, health services, etc. But energy relies heavily on fossil fuels (84% of total energy mix (OWD, 2020)). Therefore, in order to reduce GHG emissions to limit global temperature rise, energy systems must shift to renewable sources. Governments, EU and US in particular, are seeing post Covid-19 recovery packages as an opportunity to invest in renewable energy (henceforth, RE) to create more jobs while fighting climate change (EU, 2021; White, 2021). This paper explores energy systems and discusses the concept of energy security and particularly in relation to the fossil-renewable energy transition. The paper discusses the potential and likelihood of dramatically phasing out fossil fuels with renewables to meet the Paris Agreement -reducing GHG emissions to limit global warming well below 2o C and at 1.5o C and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 (UNFCCC, 2020).
Energy Systems
What constitutes energy systems? A system consists of elements/actors and the processes or services with which they are interlinked (Howard T, 2007). Likewise, primary energy resources (sun, water, coal, nuclear, etc.) and the services that rely on them to fulfill society’s demands develop energy systems. IEA’s data illustrates the sectoral distribution of energy usage (IEA, 2020b).
Prominent industries that rely on energy in US include chemicals (29%), refining (18%), mining (11%), construction (7%), steel (6%), food (4%), agriculture (5%) etc. (EIA, 2020b). Moreover, energy systems become much more complex if we further look into inter-dependencies of these industries, for instance, the food processing industry relies on machinery (steel industry), facility (construction) and agriculture, fisheries, chemicals, etc. Similarly, transportation being the highest consumer plays a pivotal role in supply chains.
Energy demand is going to increase in the future and the rationale for this growth is in line with that of the current economic system, that is, GDP must grow otherwise several important state institutions will stop functioning e.g., budget financing through taxation of the market, etc. (Parrique, 2020). Therefore, to support GDP growth, the development of energy infrastructure is crucial to meet socio-economic needs. Also, energy demand is subjective to the sector. For instance, industries have more tendency to grow without using more energy while the same is less true for transportation and hard for infrastructure development (Tsafos, 2018). Consequently, interruption in one element of energy systems can affect several others making them sensitive than ever.
Talking about sustainable development goals (SDGs), energy is not limited to SDG 7, “affordable and clean energy”, but multiple SDGs are connected with it. (UNESCAP, 2016) report shows possible connections of SDG7 with SDG 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16. Therefore, to secure energy for uninterrupted services the concept of energy security is becoming pertinent.
Energy Security
To understand energy security, one should be aware of three fundamental questions of security i.e., what to protect, against what threats, and by what means (von Hippel et al., 2011). Moreover, Asia Pacific Energy Research Center (APREC) introduced 4 “As” of energy security -availability, accessibility, affordability, and acceptability- of vital and susceptible energy resources (Cherp and Jewell, 2014). To ensure availability of resources, first “A”, we should know energy resources we are most reliant on. IEA data shows that fossil fuels acquire a hefty share of our energy consumption: wind and solar contribution (48,322ktoe) is dwarfed against that of fossil fuel products’ (40,38,502ktoe) (IEA, 2020a).
Since fossil fuels (mainly oil) are the leading energy resources, their availability is a matter of security. Nevertheless, the world has huge reserves but a few percent of them are economically exploitable and located in only handful of countries. A simplistic diagram by a study (Baker et al., 2011) gives the idea the amount of world’s known reserves of oil versus those that are economically exploitable.
Four countries including the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Canada produce 47% of world oil (EIA, 2019). Therefore, in countries that highly rely on oil exports, e.g., China (14% world share), India (4%), Japan (4%)(EIA, 2019), it is considered as a strategic asset and a big security concern. Accessibility (second “A”) too is crucial and subjected to the regional and global geopolitical situations for oil trade. Any situation in exporting countries that can halt extraction or disrupt supply chains or mere speculations can cause price hikes in importing countries (von Hippel et al., 2011).
Affordability, third “A”, or cost minimization and stability is an important component of energy policy. For producers, esp. in the Middle East, per barrel oil production costs too less than for consumers. Also, due to depleting resources and concentrated markets, prices are expected to fluctuate even more (Johansson, 2013).
But it is only the fourth “A”- acceptability- of energy security that has sparked the debate of radical reduction of fossil fuels to meet Paris Agreement i.e., maintain global temperature rise well below to 2o C and at 1.5o C and achieve net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 (UNFCCC, 2020). Energy sector accounts for 73.2% of global GHG emissions (industry 24.2%, transport 16.2%, buildings 17.5%) (Ritchie and Roser, 2016).
At the current pace of emissions, the earth will be warmer by 2.8-3.2 °C by 2100 (Ritchie and Roser, 2019). The aftermath would be melting glaciers, sea-level rise, biodiversity loss, severe floods and droughts, the spread of diseases like malaria, changes in land-use patterns, hurricanes, less freshwater availability in lakes, etc. (NatGeo, 2020).
So, keep going with current energy resources and their consumption pattern is certainly not a sustainable way of supporting our future energy needs.
Phasing-out Fossil Fuels
Earth Day 2021 was special because of two facts. Firstly, the world hailed United States’ return to Paris Agreement, and secondly, European Union is proposing a generous post-Covid-19 recovery package as a window of opportunity to invest in green technologies for resilient socio-economic recovery. President Biden’s administration has set goals for the US to be a carbon-free electricity producer by 2035, promoting investment for innovative clean technologies in transportation, buildings, and agriculture, etc. to become climate neutral by 2050 (White, 2021). Similarly, the EU’s recovery package (NextGenerationEU) plans to allocate 37% of the total €672.5 billion for climate-related investments and 20% for digitalization (EU, 2021). Both policies aim to divert capital from the brown economy to the green economy to create jobs, mature clean technologies, and help fighting climate change. The key element of these plans is abandoning the fossil economy and investing in renewable energy. Several studies have warned about further investment in the fossil economy to attain speedy economic recovery in post-pandemic times. Such a strategy has failed after the great recession of 2008 where green stimuli were dwarfed by the subsidies for fossil fuels (Jaeger, 2020). Consequently, the global emissions rebounded strongly after the crisis. But this time the situation is different. The last decade was marked by increased environmental awareness at the political level. The formal recognition of planetary boundaries in 2009, setting SDGs and signing Paris Agreement in 2015, and disclosure of the IPCC climate scenarios report in 2018 have underscored the urgency of action to address global warming. Circumspectly, while the global north is in the pursuit of meeting climate targets of 1.5o C and 2o C, policymakers must be aware of how fast the world should move away from the brown economy? Also, what energy security concerns are posed by such a transition?
To realize the 1.5o C target, fossil fuel emissions must drop dramatically i.e., 10% per year if we had started mitigation measures in 2018 (Figure 6). Also, the production of fossil fuel should drop by 6% a year to curb the emissions by a third by 2030 (DW, 2019; Verkuijl and Lazarus, 2020). To put these figures into context, the world oil consumption dropped by 9%, coal usage reduced by 8% and natural gas demand plummeted by 2% during the pandemic (EIA, 2020a; Kelly and Kumar, 2020). Thus, if we are going to reduce fossil fuel production by 6% per year to uphold our commitments towards climate change, the share of renewable energy needs a sharp increase from 11.5% compared to that of fossil fuel (Figure 7). Hence, while ensuring uninterrupted energy supply for supporting socio-economic needs, such radical transition in the energy sector poses some energy security concerns.
Renewable Energy and Energy Security
Energy security become crucial for renewable technologies as they have less energy density, require large geographical distribution (land-use changes) and most importantly, they are more material extensive than fossil fuels (Forbes, 2020). For removal of fossil fuel from energy sector, (von Hippel et al., 2011) discusses four transition considerations.
- How much fossil fuel to be replaced for sustainable development?
- Output densities of RE vs Fossil fuels
- Required intermittencies for RE
- Relative geographic locations of RE and fossil fuels
Apparently, RE seems more secure as countries do not rely on each other for wind and solar energies but, climate change (changing weather patterns) will impact RE more than fossil energy (positively and negatively), causing huge variations in output (Johansson, 2013). Furthermore, the energy density of renewables is way lesser than fossil fuels i.e., gasoline is 1015 times more energy-dense than solar energy and a billion times more than wind and hydropower to produce the same amount of power (Forbes, 2020).
Due to less density and large variation in output (depending upon wind speed, solar radiation, etc.), renewable technologies are often distributed over large areas. Also, the potential of RE (solar, wind, hydro) and bioenergy is dependent on geographical locations. For instance, oil producers in the middle east are naturally located in areas where there is huge potential for solar energy. So, RE too, is not secure in terms of energy independence of a country (Johansson, 2013).
Large spatial distribution and storage technologies (e.g., batteries) can ensure uninterrupted energy supply for end users despite large variations in the intensity of primary energy resources (e.g., solar radiation, wind speed, water head etc.). But, renewable technologies, including batteries, require more materials to manufacture (Figure 8).
Moreover, these critical materials are available only in handful countries. Therefore, a sudden shift from fossil fuels to renewables would shift world’s dependency from oil producing countries to those few countries that produce critical raw material for RE (Figure 9).
Nevertheless, EU aims to reduce its dependency on the export of critical raw material by funding existing mines and exploring new ones within the territory of member states. Moreover, some countries have concentrated market share of some material e.g., cobalt in Congo. Unrest in these countries may severely impact global supply chain of RE technology (Penke, 2021). Governments or dominant groups in those countries may want to interrupt supply as a strategic or economic move especially when the world would be undergoing a rapid energy transition.
To reduce material dependency in RE technologies, (Wang et al., 2020) suggest solutions in three domains. Firstly, an increased and efficient mining practice will be required that has little impact on the surrounding environment. But it is worth noting that mitigation measures certainly cannot completely recover the damage caused by huge mining processes. Secondly, achieve efficiency at every stage of the material cycle i.e., from extraction to end-life because huge material losses have been reported to recover the material at the end-life stage. Thirdly, innovative solutions should be developed that require less material to manufacture RE technologies. However, material recyclability and efficient production will not reduce the demand for raw material in a rapid energy transition because material once used may not be available until the end of product lifetime, say solar panel or turbine, etc.
Additionally, biofuel energy may use the land previously being used for food production, disturbing food supply chains. Therefore, rapid replacement of fossil fuels by RE may give rise to new energy security concerns e.g., increased mining activity, altered land-use patterns, water disputes (dams) or nuclear hazards, etc.
Discussion
Renewables have developed and deployed quite fast in last decade and we can have optimism about their greater share in future energy mix. But given that, fossil fuels are deeply entrenched in energy systems (Figure 7) and took nearly a century to reach current levels, their complete replacement with RE may also take long time (Smil, 2013). Additionally, single technology, say electric cars, may enter the system quickly but whole system takes time to undergo a transition, for example, replacement of gas stations, installation of electric charging points, exploring required reserves of raw material, creating market demand etc. (Grubler, Wilson and Nemet, 2016). Furthermore, preceding technology resists newcomers i.e., Figure 10 shows that succeeding fuels could not acquire same share in energy mix after same amount of time vis-à-vis the predecessors.
Also, fossil sector is still not willing to give-in to favor RE technologies. Recent “The Production Gap” report highlights large discrepancy between the climate commitments of global leaders to limit global warming between 1.5o C to 2o C and their support for projected growth of fossil sector in coming decades (The Production Gap, 2019). As planned, around 50% more fossil fuels will be produced by 2030 vis-à-vis required by 2o C target and 120% more as required by 1.5o C target. Thus, continued political and financial support of fossil sector is certainly inconsistent with climate targets.
Conclusion
Sustainable development of modern society is highly dependent on energy services that rely on primary resources, currently dominated by fossil fuels. Geopolitical and environmental concerns attached to these resources have raised concerns about energy security. Fossil fuels are becoming less desirable as they responsible for large share of greenhouse emission. Therefore, to limit global warming well below 2o C and at 1.5o C, as directed by Paris Agreement, we need to reduce fossil fuel emissions by 10% each year by 2030. Renewable technologies have emerged as alternatives, but they too have their own energy security issues. Less energy density, large geographical distribution, and extensive material requirements of renewable energy can give rise to land-use conflict and geopolitical concerns due to material interdependencies among the nations. Nevertheless, fossil fuels are hard to eliminate from energy sector and it is unlikely to happen at a pace required to meet 1.5o C and 2o C targets unless governments abandon their dual policy of supporting fossil sector and pledging climate action. Moreover, a holistic and systemic approach is cordial in guiding the energy transition because energy systems are interconnected, therefore, ill-planned or unidirectional approaches can clean emission from one sector but may burden another.
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