BAKU, Azerbaijan, December 2. The energy intensity of the global economy is forecast to improve by almost 2 percent in 2022, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said, Trend reports, citing the latest analysis from the IEA.
According to the report, the energy intensity, which is a key economic energy efficiency indicator, is expected to increase, after two years of stalled progress.
Although this year’s growth in energy intensity is a significant step up from the last two years, the current levels are still lagging behind from reaching an average 4 percent per year from 2020 through 2030 needed to achieve the goals in the Net Zero Scenario, the IEA noted.
“Global energy demand growth is expected to moderate significantly in 2022, to around 1 percent, while an increasingly gloomy and uncertain economic environment has lowered expectations for GDP growth from around 5 percent to 3.2 percent over the year. If growth weakens further, this could bring down energy intensity improvements to 1.7 percent, other things remaining equal,” the report said.
As the IEA pointed out, accelerating the increase in energy intensity based on the 2 percent rate adopted in the Stated Policy Scenario (STEPS) to 4 percent per annum under the Net Zero Scenario would avoid energy consumption of 95 EJ per annum in 2030. This would add an additional 5 Gt of CO2 emission reductions over and above what would have been achieved in stages by then.
“Assuming emissions reductions of around 6 Gt per year from a 2 percent annual intensity improvement over 2020-2030 and the added 5 Gt per year from achieving 4 percent in the Net Zero Scenario, total CO2 emissions reductions from intensity improvements could be as high as 11 Gt by 2030. This is almost one-third of current annual emissions from fuel combustion,” the report added.