SA’s ambitious pledge to cut emissions

Melanie Gosling

Environment Writer

SOUTH Africa’s pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions was among the four most ambitious commitments submitted to the COP21 climate talks, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report.

The others were South Korea, Brazil and Mexico.

Those with the least ambitious targets were India, China and the European Union.

And Bloomberg’s Climatescope 2015 report showed that South Africa was the fourth top investor in renewable energy after China, Brazil and Chile.

The 160 countries that together accounted for 95 percent of global emissions pledged a cumulative reduction of 37 gigatons (Gt) between 2016 and 2030.

“This is not enough to put the world on a 2ºC trajectory, which would require further reductions of 15 to 20Gt a year by 2030,” the report said.

Bloomberg analysts saw India and south-east Asia as key to curbing future growth in global emissions. Although India and southeast Asia currently accounted for less than 20 percent of global emissions from the power sector, this would change dramatically over the next 25 years when the planned 200 giga watts of coal-fired power plants were built in the region.

“We forecast India and southeast Asia will account for almost 40 percent of global emissions from the power sector by 2040. Over the next 25 years, cumulative power sector emissions in India and south-east Asia will almost equal that of China,” it said.

China’s emissions are expected to peak before 2030, but India and south-east Asia’s emissions are expected to keep on rising until 2040.

“If global emissions growth is to be brought under control, it is crucial to address growth in India and south-east Asia,” the report said.

The global power system would be transformed over the coming decades, based purely on economic trends. Renewable energy was getting cheaper and costs had fallen to such an extent that these power sources were competitive with fossil fuel.

“On a levellised cost of electricity basis, renewable energy technologies are currently cheaper than coal or gas-fired powered plants in several of the world’s major markets. Based purely on economic trends, we expect that the global power system will be transformed and the share of fossil fuels in power generation will peak around 2025 and begin to slowly decline thereafter. We expect fossil fuel to fall from 66 percent to 44 percent by 2040.”

Renewable energy would dominate new power plants purely because of the dropping price of these technologies, even without additional policies to support low carbon technology.

“Energy efficiency gains and greater penetration of wind and solar will eat into the demand for coal and natural gas in the power sector.

“This impact is not being adequately recognised by the fossil fuel industry or by the International Energy Agency (IEA). We expect the power sector coal and gas demand to be below the forecasts made by BP, Exxon, Statoil, Shell, Gazprom and the IEA,” the report said.

Although the high growth of renewable energy would result in a decline in greenhouse gas emissions, these would be “far from enough” to keep the temperature rise at 2ºC.