‘Very small silver lining’ of COVID-19? An extra 2.5 years to reduce power sector emissions: report – Utility Dive

Dive Brief:

New clean energy technologies with increasingly cheaper costs will replace an aggregate of the residual fleet of technology which has different operating characteristics, Henbest said, paving the way for a different demand shape.

As the world transitions away from coal energy and other large baseload power plants to smaller generators and more distributed models, the demand curve will become "more choppy," and volatile, he added. This distinction will not be addressed by energy storage alone, Henbest said, but will require coal and natural gas for ramping.

The gas sector is not expected to fully recover from the COVIDshock to the economy, although the resource continues to play an important role. The generators most affected by COVID are the "coal and gas plants that have to pay for their fuel in a declining demand environment," Henbest said. However, gas capacity will continue "to rise across the world and it does so because gas is the cheapest way of meeting those seasonal requirements of backing up wind and PV and batteries."

Beyond 2030, fossil fuel generation will consist of mostly peakergas plants, running very low capacity factors for a few, highly variable hours of the year, he said. The cheap gas, at that point, "actually blocks deeper transition to renewables, and gas gets sort of stuck in the system."

Per BNEF's economic transition scenario, 56% of electricity generation by 2050 will be made up of wind and solar, and about 20% will be hydropower,nuclear and other clean energy,with fossil fuels dropping from over 60% of generation today to about 24% in 30 years.

BNEF's outlook report is "just one input" on the future of emissions, showing reductions on a gradual slope that keeps the world below two degrees of global warming by 2100, Henbest added.

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'Very small silver lining' of COVID-19? An extra 2.5 years to reduce power sector emissions: report - Utility Dive