The European Commission (EC) has outlined a new approach to moving to a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy by 2050. It says this would cost perhaps €1.42 trillion per annum. Much of that would have to be spent anyway, however, to replace existing capital items, including power plants and vehicles. And, if geared to a net-zero emission target, that investment would reduce and avoid some costs, using energy more efficiently and phasing out the use of increasingly expensive fossil fuels.

Taking expected economic growth patterns into account, the EC calculated that, on the basis of their plan, the current rising trend in energy-related EU household expenses as a share of income was “expected to peak at about 7.5% around 2025-2030 before declining thereafter under all scenarios as the benefits of the energy transition materialize in full”. As a result, “by 2050, households would spend 5.6% of income on energy-related expenses, i.e. nearly 2 percentage points lower than in 2015 and lower than the share in 2005”.

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All power to gas

The programme would also, of course, avoid the ever-growing heath, social, environmental and economic costs of climate change. To that end the EC outlines a plan for joint action focused on seven strategic building blocks:

• Energy efficiency measures, which should play a central role, reducing energy consumption by as much as half by 2050 compared to 2005.The EC notes that, while energy efficiency will play a central role in decarbonizing industrial processes, “much of the reduced energy demand will occur in buildings, in both the residential and services sectors, which today are responsible for 40% of energy consumption”, with a large majority of homes using renewable heating – green electricity, district heating, renewable gas or solar thermal.

• The large-scale deployment of renewables, leading to wider electrification and to a high degree of decentralization. “By 2050, the share of electricity in final energy demand will at least double, bringing it up to 53%, and electricity production will increase substantially to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, up to 2.5 times of today’s levels depending on the options selected for the energy transition,” says the EC. That, it believes, will “give an important role to consumers that produce energy themselves (prosumers), and local communities, to encourage residential take-up of renewables”.

• Cutting emissions from transport, which is responsible for around a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. To achieve this, the EC says “a combination of decarbonized, decentralized and digitalized power, more efficient and sustainable batteries, highly efficient electric powertrains, connectivity and autonomous driving offers prospects to decarbonize road transport”. But it warns that “batteries have so far a low energy density, and for now their high weight makes the technology ill-suited for aviation and long-distance shipping” and also for long-haul trucks and coaches, while “railway remains the most energy efficient solution for carrying freight over medium to long distances”. Hydrogen-based technologies such as electric vehicles and vessels based on fuel cells may become competitive in the medium to long-term, according to the report. “Liquefied natural gas with high blends of bio-methane could also be a short-term alternative for long-distance haul”, it says, while “in long-distance shipping and heavy-duty vehicles, not only bio-fuels and bio-gas but also e-fuels can have a role provided that they are carbon-free throughout their production chain”. And finally, “aviation must see a shift to advanced biofuels and carbon-free e-fuels, with hybridization & other improvement in aircraft technology having a role in improving efficiency”.

• A competitive EU industry and circular economy. The EC says “recovery and recycling of raw materials will be of particular importance in those sectors and technologies where new dependencies might emerge, such as a reliance on critical materials like cobalt, rare earths or graphite, whose production is concentrated in a few countries outside Europe”. It adds “renewable hydrogen and sustainable biomass can be a feedstock for a number of industrial processes, such as steel production and certain chemicals, with Carbon Capture and Utilization also being an option for industry, producing e-fuels”.

• Developing smart network infrastructure and inter-connections. The EC looks to smart electricity and data/information grids, and where needed, hydrogen pipelines, supported by digitalization and further sector integration. That clearly will require a lot of political negotiation across the EU.

• Reaping the full benefits of bio-economy and creating essential carbon sinks. That involves expanding biomass production/use, while also ensuring natural carbon sinks are “maintained or even enhanced”. Not an easy task, especially as the EC also wants to avoid imports, since they raise concerns about “emissions from land use change in exporting countries”. It says “a net-zero emissions economy will require increasing amounts of biomass compared to today’s consumption”, with up to an 80% rise in bio-energy use by 2050 compared to today. However, “even with improved sustainable management practices, existing EU forests alone could not deliver that amount without a substantial decline of the EU’s forest sink and its other ecosystem-services, which needs to be avoided”. Indeed, the EC says “maintaining and further increasing the natural sink of forests, soils, and agricultural lands and coastal wetlands is crucial for the success of the Strategy, as it allows the offsetting of residual emissions from sectors where decarbonization is the most challenging, including agriculture itself”. New farming methods and patterns may help to cut emissions, while afforestation and restoration of degraded forest lands and other ecosystems can, the EC says, boost sequestration. But even so, it will be hard not to destroy sinks.

• Tackle remaining carbon dioxide emissions with carbon capture and storage (CCS). That seems to have been downgraded somewhat. CCS was “previously seen as a major decarbonization option for the power sector & energy intensive industries,” says the EC. “Today this potential appears lower, considering the rapid deployment of renewable energy technologies, other options to reduce emissions in industrial sectors and issues concerning social acceptance of the technology itself. However, CCS deployment is still necessary, especially in energy intensive industries and – in the transitional phase – for the production of carbon-free hydrogen. CCS will also be required if CO2 emissions from biomass-based energy and industrial plants are to be captured and stored to create negative emissions.” So the message is, keep at it, if only as a research focus, but with Biomass with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) present “only post-2050 in 2°C scenarios”, although it might be needed earlier in a 1.5°

Power to X and carbon sinks

While CCS, and BECCS, have been demoted somewhat, “Power to Gas” has risen up the agenda. The EC looks at the role that might be played by what it calls generically “Power-to-X” technologies, which transform electricity into synthetic gases — hydrogen, methane or other gases — and liquids. “Hydrogen produced with carbon-free electricity, combined with CO2 from sustainable biomass or Direct Air Capture, can make a carbon-neutral alternative of the same molecules as natural gas or oil, and thus can be distributed via existing transmission/distribution systems and used by existing installations and applications,” says the EC. The drawback is that this production is energy intensive, but “the potential advantage of power-to-X is that synthetic fuels can be stored and used in multiple ways across different economic sectors, where it is otherwise hard to decarbonize (e.g. industry and transport).”

The EC doesn’t explore this specifically, but another attraction of Power to Gas electrolysis is that it offers a way to get green gas without land use for biomass production or CCS (unlike BECCS). And that offers a way to balance variable renewables – by storing converted excess green power as hydrogen and making power again from it when there are green power lulls.

However, balancing seems to be seen as less of an issue than overall emission reductions. “The deployment of no-regret options such as renewables including sustainable advanced biofuels, energy efficiency, impetus towards circular economy alongside individual options such as electrification, hydrogen and alternative fuels or new approaches to mobility, are not sufficient for a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy by 2050,” warns the EC. “Under such technology scenarios, emissions reduce only by 80% by 2050 compared to 1990,” but “the inclusion of more land and forestry sinks could reduce them by 90%”.

In conclusion, the EC stresses the need for more sinks and says “reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions will require maximizing the potential of technological and circular economy options, the large-scale deployment of natural land-based carbon sinks including in the agricultural and forestry sectors as well as shifts in mobility patterns”.

That means pushing nearly all the policy and technology buttons, and the EC also retains nuclear, with around a 15% contribution, although, oddly, it says little more about that in the main report. It seems more interested in talking about “Power to X” and e-fuels, and carbon sinks. The new EC plan is certainly bold. It may still include nuclear but it is talking about a net-zero emission target for 2050 for the entire EU, and that is pretty radical. In my next post I look at the situation globally — at progress so far, and at some of the latest high-renewables non-nuclear scenarios.