The horrific Russian assault on Ukraine is altering the world earlier than our eyes – and that is particularly evident within the sphere of vitality, write Dan Jørgensen and Fatih Birol.
Dan Jørgensen is the Danish minister for local weather, vitality and utilities; Fatih Birol is the chief director of the Worldwide Power Company (IEA). This opinion piece was contributed solely to EURACTIV.
The Russian invasion has destabilized world vitality markets, setting off sharp spikes in gas and commodity costs which are hurting shoppers all over the world and threatening the delicate financial restoration from the Covid-19 disaster. It has laid naked the essential function of vitality insurance policies for individuals’s each day lives, our financial safety and the way forward for our planet.
The world now faces a large number of inauspicious and interconnected selections relating to the way in which we produce and eat vitality – each now and sooner or later – and our response to a modified geopolitical panorama.
The speedy problem is to wean European economies off Russian fossil fuels, which it has used as a political and financial weapon, whereas making an attempt to ease the strains in markets to forestall a harmful vitality provide crunch.
Right now’s vitality disaster threatens to have an effect on a wider array of vitality sources, and much more international locations and folks, than the oil shocks of the Nineteen Seventies. In some economies, it has already resulted within the highest costs in historical past for pure fuel, electrical energy and petrol. And in immediately’s unstable atmosphere, we will’t rule out the scenario getting worse.
On the similar time, we should not lose observe of the world’s important efforts to deal with local weather change and restrict the worldwide temperature rise to 1.5°C. If we’re to satisfy the objectives of the Paris Settlement, a swift and clear vitality transition is the one inexpensive and sustainable answer.
Most of the methods to deal with immediately’s vitality safety disaster are additionally a part of the answer to the local weather disaster. This week, vitality and local weather leaders from across the globe are gathering in Paris on the 2022 IEA Ministerial Assembly to debate find out how to speed up motion on these essential and interlinked points.
On the coronary heart of the speedy answer to immediately’s challenges are efforts to make our use of vitality extra environment friendly. If our houses leak much less warmth, our vehicles burn much less petrol, and our washing machines use much less electrical energy, which reduces vitality payments, provide strains, fossil gas imports and greenhouse fuel emissions.
This is the reason vitality effectivity options – resembling retrofitting buildings to make them cheaper to maintain heat in winter, and changing fuel boilers with extra environment friendly warmth pumps – are key components of the IEA’s 10-Level plan to scale back the European Union’s reliance on Russian pure fuel provides by subsequent winter whereas retaining it on observe for its local weather objectives.
The scope to make houses throughout Europe extra vitality environment friendly is large. And we’re inspired to see many governments in Europe proper now saying greater ranges of funding for retrofitting houses, which has the added bonus of making numerous jobs.
Within the Nineteen Seventies, the 2 main oil shocks motivated many international locations to start out turning into much less depending on oil. As an instantaneous response to the disaster, Denmark imposed car-free Sundays and turned off town lights in 2 the evenings whereas residents turned down their heating.
These measures had been non permanent however the oil disaster grew to become a degree that began Denmark’s vitality transition.
Within the present disaster, turning down your private home’s thermostat can nonetheless be a strong instrument to save cash and vitality – and that’s why it’s additionally a part of the IEA’s plan for decreasing reliance on Russian fuel.
And a few of the measures that proved efficient through the Nineteen Seventies – resembling automotive sharing – are among the many IEA’s suggestions for emergency actions to chop oil use amid immediately’s hovering costs and market turmoil.
Right now, we’re additionally lucky in lots of international locations to have extra superior applied sciences to avoid wasting vitality whereas nonetheless making certain comfy lives. These embrace digital applied sciences for regulating vitality demand, subtle heating methods, extremely gas environment friendly automobiles, electrical vehicles, and superior insulation for buildings.
We even have extra high-speed rail, which is extra environment friendly and fewer polluting than short-haul flights, in addition to digital assembly software program that may keep away from oil use by changing some enterprise journeys. These are all a part of the answer too.
Within the world pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050 that the IEA set out final yr, measures to enhance vitality effectivity are known as upon to deliver down world CO2 emissions by 13 billion tonnes by 2030, second solely to wind and photo voltaic when it comes to emissions reductions.
On the similar time, this might additionally scale back air air pollution, create tens of millions of jobs and enhance the productiveness of industries. Some modifications in shopper behaviour resembling extra biking, strolling and utilizing public transport and trains additionally play a job.
As people, the magnitude of each the local weather disaster and the scenario in Ukraine can go away us feeling powerless. Nonetheless, how we use vitality is an space the place we will make a distinction.
Although they might appear too small to matter, actions like turning down the warmth, utilizing public transport, renovating your home or becoming a member of a car-sharing programme can have an effect.
And governments have the facility to do much more by means of their insurance policies. We can be urging Ministers from all over the world to take stronger motion on vitality effectivity in response to immediately’s crises – each at this week’s IEA Ministerial Assembly in Paris and the International Convention on Power Effectivity that’s happening in Denmark in June.
Now’s the time to do all we will to pursue independence from Russian fossil fuels and on the similar time, tackle the urgent local weather disaster.