And a cheaper transition is a more palatable one for countries around the world. By speeding innovation in this period, on the other hand, we could reduce the annual costs of the transition to net-zero emissions $2.5 trillion per year by 2050. In other words, clean energy technologies often cost more to use.Ī 2021 study by Vivid Economics suggests that in a scenario with limited public and private funding for research, development, and commercialization of new technologies, the green premium for several critical technologies would remain too high by the end of this decade. Most of these technologies, however, come with what Bill Gates refers to as a high “green premium”-a measurement of the difference in cost between a clean option and a carbon- intensive one. We’ll also need technologies to slash emissions from agriculture and deforestation and to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it. Those timelines must be compressed for the world to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 ☌ above preindustrial levels, which world leaders agreed at last year’s Glasgow Climate Conference would offer the best chance of avoiding catastrophic effects.Ĭlean energy technologies in the electric power, transportation, industry, and building sectors will drive this change, because the use of fossil fuels in these areas causes three-quarters of global greenhouse-gas emissions. And it took decades for them to reach a scale where they could significantly reduce global emissions. Only a handful of clean technologies, such as silicon solar panels, onshore wind turbines, light- emitting diodes (LEDs), and lithium-ion batteries, have graduated from scientific laboratories to mass deployment. The International Energy Agency forecasts that roughly half the reductions needed to cut emissions to nearly zero by 2050 must come from technologies that are not ready for the market today because they’re too expensive to manufacture, haven’t been tested at scale, or both. But emerging climate technologies must come to market during this decade too, even if they don’t make much of a dent in emissions right away. By 2030, global emissions must fall by half, mostly through massive deployment of commercial solutions such as wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles.
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