BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 10
By Leman Zeynalova - Trend:
Investment in renewables for end-use set to increase in 2021, Trend reports with reference to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
“Investment in renewables for end-use, including solar thermal applications (for district, space and water heating), bioenergy and geothermal, reached USD 23 billion in 2020, a 10% decline compared with 2019. Investment has been on a declining trend in recent years, but is set to rise in 2021. China and Europe, which represent three-quarters of total investment, drive the prospective increase, but this depends on economic growth and the extent of policy support. The cost of solar heat for industrial processes has fallen by over 40 percent in Europe and larger plants drove the levelized cost of heat down by half between 2014 and 2020 (IRENA, 2021). Global heat pump sales continued to grow in 2020, driven by installations in France, Germany and Italy, but remain tied to new building construction. The cost of heating with heat pumps is decreasing as new installations and economies of scale are realised in Europe and the technology becomes more affordable,” IEA said in its latest report.
Global energy efficiency, as measured by the energy intensity of the global economy, has to improve at a rate of at least 3 percent per year in order to be consistent with the SDS, and by 4 percent per year by the end of the decade in a scenario consistent with reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, according to the report.
“Prior to the crisis, the rate of progress was well short of the pace required, and the pandemic pushed this indicator down to only 0.8% in 2020. Accelerating the pace of efficiency improvements will require a dramatic increase in related investments, incentivised by stronger policies. The levels of investment seen in recent years are set to rise in the 2020s in the STEPS, a reflection of greater attention to efficiency in post-Covid and net-zero strategies as well as a pick-up in the turnover of the capital stock as economies recover. But this projection is dwarfed by the requirements of climate-driven scenarios, which see a rapid surge in sales of electrified and more efficient vehicles, wide-ranging industrial efficiency gains, and a continued ramp-up of spending on efficient new buildings and retrofits. All of these changes need to be enabled by strong policy supports and improved financing conditions,” said the agency.
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