written 1 January 2023
published 8 January 2023
To start the New Year on a positive note, here is energy information excerpted from "Good News Stories You Probably Didn't Hear About in 2022" (https://futurecrunch.com/goodnews2022/?ref=future-crunch-newsletter).
The invasion of Ukraine turned clean energy into a national security issue. Nineteen European countries accelerated decarbonization plans. Nine North Sea countries announced increases in offshore wind deployment. The continent cut its demand for gas by a quarter, and increased its clean energy target to 82 percent by 2030.
Germany agreed to spend $180 billion by 2026 to accelerate the clean economy shift. Czechia will phase out coal five years sooner than previously planned. Slovenia will stop using coal for electricity by 2033. Romania will phase out coal by 2030. The $11 billion Nord Stream 2 project went bankrupt.
China passed regulations forcing all their coal plants to compete with renewables by 2025. Chinese coal consumption fell for 12 straight months between June 2021 and June 2022. New coal projects outside China became effectively uninsurable. The global pipeline of new coal capacity collapsed. The US coal surge ended before it started, and the European surge turned out to be an illusion.
China tightened its environmental regulations, placing a ban on new industrial projects in polluted areas. China revealed plans for 100 GW of battery storage and 120 GW of pumped hydro by 2030, and installed 140 GW of wind and solar (more than the entire world in 2020), with plans to build a US-sized amount of clean energy every year until 2025.
The global solar industry produced 295 GW of panels, a 45 percent year-on-year increase, and now expects annual sales of 940 GW of solar by 2025. That's 5.8 percent of total global electricity demand, every year, or the equivalent of the world’s entire fleet of 438 nuclear plants every 20 months.
The financial community is beginning to realize a dead plant is bad for business. Munich Re, Swiss Re, and Allianz, three of the world's largest fossil fuel reinsurers, announced oil and gas exits. Korean Re, Asia’s second-largest reinsurance company, will no longer provide reinsurance for new coal mining or power plant construction. HSBC (Europe’s biggest bank), Nordea (the biggest Nordic bank), Credit Agricole (the largest retail lender in France), Lloyds (the UK's largest bank), MAPFRE (the largest non-life insurer in Latin America), and Japan's three largest banks, all announced they will no longer provide financing for new oil and gas fields or new thermal coal mining.
The US Senate passed its first ever comprehensive climate spending bill and an international climate treaty so powerful it could avert nearly 1°F of global warming. Analysts are predicting 'staggering' amounts of clean energy deployment, as wind, solar and batteries now account for over 95 percent of new capacity in US interconnection queues. California passed its most comprehensive climate change legislation, with $54 billion in climate and energy spending, new restrictions on oil and gas drilling, and a mandate to stop adding atmospheric carbon dioxide by 2045. US households installed record amounts of rooftop solar. Utilities finally stopped trying to slow down the energy transition and started spending money on transmission. Wind, sun and water generated more electricity than either coal or nuclear.
In China, the largest car market in the world, almost 30 percent of new vehicles sold were fully electric, up from 13 percent in 2021 and just 5 percent in 2020. At this pace, pure battery electric vehicles will be a third of China’s new car market by next year. Global electric vehicle sales grew from 6.6 million to 10 million, and spending worldwide exceeded $450 billion. Lawmakers in Europe banned internal combustion engines in all new cars and vans by 2035, as did Canada, California, and New York. Hyundai closed its combustion engine development division. Nissan ended combustion engine development in all markets except the US. Chrysler will stop combustion engine powered vehicle production by 2028. Buick will only sell electric vehicles by 2030. Porsche reported that its all-electric Porsche Taycan is now outselling the 911.
Global battery manufacturing capacity increased 38 percent, batteries last longer than predicted, and more recycling capacity came online than there was battery scrap available. Battery factories worth $25.7 billion are now in the works in the US, mostly in red states.
This is not nearly enough, and the outcome is not guaranteed, but the climate fight is beginning to work.
