Many of us that have been involved with UVIG over the past decade have been witness to and involved in the start of one of the most remarkable and ongoing transformations in human history – the rapidly accelerating global switch from fossil fuels toward clean and renewable sources of energy. In the early days of renewables, technical challenges were many and at the time we could only dream of what we have achieved today.

But what we have achieved is just the beginning. As we consider the path of transformation ahead, and the hard work that remains, it is important to reflect on one of the key drivers of the renewable energy business – carbon – as it frames the magnitude of the challenge ahead.

The business of renewable energy had a great 2015, with a record global investment of $329 billion to install 64 GW of wind and 57 GW of solar generation capacity, roughly enough new electricity generation to meet the demand of half the residents of the United Kingdom. One of the factors driving the growth of renewables is the increased awareness that carbon dioxide emissions, in large part from the world’s power plants, are causing our climate to change.

No longer the rhetoric of environmentalists, climate change became a major issue on the international stage in 2015 with global leaders from Barack Obama to Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel discussing its threat to society. Even military leaders and Pope Francis issued public statements urging broad, immediate action.

As 2015 drew to a close, 195 nations banded together in Paris and made a historic commitment to limit global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels. In terms of awareness and agreement about the dangers of climate change, 2015 was nothing short of a breakthrough.

However, this 1.5 degree threshold was almost immediately crossed in February of 2016 when the global average temperature increase hit 1.6 degrees Centigrade  –  reminding us all of the difficulty of meeting this pledge and underscoring the sense of urgency..

While it’s clear that we are now, more than ever, on a transformative path, the magnitude of what was agreed at the COP21 meeting cannot be overstated and the real work has only just begun. Making the migration from a carbon intensive, ever-expanding civilization to a near fossil fuel free existence will be one of the greatest technological and economic transformations in the history of the world.

But why now, and why a focus on renewable energy?  The simple answer is that it is clear that we are running out of time to prevent catastrophic climate change and given this pressure, we will need many solutions.

For perspective, think of carbon emissions as a simple budget. Scientists agree that to have a 50% chance of limiting total global warming to 2 degrees centigrade (the fallback agreement of the COP21 conference), we can only inject a total of 3,000 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere.

So far, humanity has emitted approximately 2,000 billion tons and puts an additional 32 billion tons into the atmosphere every year according to the IEA. If we continue to emit at the current rate, we will use up the remaining budget by 2045, only 30 years from now.

Working within a budget that runs out in 30 years may seem like enough time to act, but we all know that this window for action is nearly identical to the lifespan of electricity generation projects, the majority of which still rely on fossil fuels. Furthermore, energy demand is growing rapidly in much of the developing world, and let us not forget that over one billion people still lack access to electricity.

The IEA analysis of COP21 shows that while the commitments of nations around the world should slow the future rate of growth, overall demand growth still dominates resulting in ever increasing emissions. Therefore, we must begin to significantly decrease the amount of carbon dioxide we emit into our atmosphere on a global and annual basis to stay within this budget – and therein lies the impetus for incredible and transformative change.

Coming back to our simple carbon budget, studies suggest that if we begin now, we can reduce annual emissions by about 2-3% per year and stay within our carbon budget. If we wait 10 years to reduce emissions, we will have to do so much faster, a rate of about 5% or more per year. To put this in perspective, if the U.S. had to reduce its carbon footprint by 5% in one year using only wind and solar capacity, it would have to install, in a single year, the total amount of wind and solar power installed over the past 30 years. And that’s just one country – the same 5% reduction has to happen at the global scale.

With stakes this high, this is obviously not a conversation of whether to invest in wind or solar or hydro or biomass or energy efficiency or storage – or whether to do so in Europe or America or China or India. This change requires massive investment in all clean technologies combined with staggering growth of renewable energy generation capacity on a global scale.

In January of 2016, U.N. chief, Ban Ki-moon challenged global investors to at least double investment in clean energy by 2020 from the record set in 2015. Others called for investment of a “clean trillion” per year – and Bill Gates called for a “clean energy miracle.”

Meeting this challenge requires that we act immediately and intelligently. But most of all, from my perspective, meeting this challenge requires us to work together – sharing information about our successes and failures as we continue the massive task of transforming our civilization to be powered by clean energy sources.

Our integration element of this global story will be critical as we develop a smart and flexible power system that successfully leverages intermittent resources with forecasting, new market structures, storage, demand response, and other technologies yet to be imagined. In the years ahead, I look forward to working with everyone at UVIG on this crucial piece of our clean energy future.

Pascal Storck, Ph.D.
Global Manager of Energy Services
Vaisala