IEA Path to Net Zero
Court Smith
An International Energy Agency report released Monday says, "Emissions reductions from the energy sector are not limited to CO2: in our pathway, methane emissions from fossil fuel supply fall by 75% over the next ten years as a result of a global, concerted effort to deploy all available abatement measures and technologies."
The pathway is, "Ever-cheaper renewable energy technologies give electricity the edge in the race to zero."
How does this relate to Corvallis? It is estimated that 60% of home heating for space and water comes from natural gas (NWN)—methane!
“We cannot reach carbon neutrality by 2050 without rapidly increasing the deployment of hydrogen,” says the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association in summaries sent by Corvallis hydrogen expert Jim Cannon.
The IEA report can be found at
https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050
There you can find why hydrogen is so important? It is a battery for excess wind and solar. Electrolysis can produce hydrogen using excess solar and wind production. Burning hydrogen produced from wind and solar for electricity generation provides a zero-carbon source of power for wind and solar energy droughts. (report p.108)
In the Industrial sector, hydrogen fuel and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology can account for half of all emissions reductions in heavy industry required to meet net zero by 2050. (report p.99)
In transportation, the IEA’s scenario for 2050 has hydrogen energy providing ~33% of fuel for heavy trucks, 60% of fuel for shipping, 33% of fuel for aviation, and – combined with grid electricity – 95% of energy consumption for rail. (report p.138).
The focus over the next decade should be on “low hanging fruit”: transitioning from fossil fuels to hydrogen as fuel for industry, refineries, and power plants (report p.75).
Following the IEA path to net-zero emissions is narrow: staying on it requires immediate and massive deployment of all available clean and efficient energy technologies. In the net-zero emissions pathway presented in this report, the world economy in 2030 is some 40% larger than today but uses 7% less energy.
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