By Teddy Nwanunobi
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has declared that achieving net zero emissions by 2050 will be a great challenge, even for advanced economies.
Delivering a keynote address at the opening day of the 20th Nigeria Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition, on Tuesday, OPEC’s Secretary General, H.E. Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo, noted that some of the advanced economies have expressed their doubts about the reality of achieving this ambitious goal.
Speaking on the theme: ‘Global Oil Market Dynamics in a Decarbonising World’, Barkindo, who was the Honourary Conference Chairman of this year’s annual event, stated that the ambitious goal would be a much more daunting feat for developing nations to achieve.
He explained that developing nations are particularly occupied with ensuring their basic needs are met day in and day out.
“Each day is a challenge to simply put food on the table and earn a decent living wage. There are emerging doubts as to how realistic the net-zero approach is, particularly when considering the unique circumstances of developing countries, especially in combating another scourge, namely energy poverty.
“Allow me to point out three significant challenges to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, namely scale and timing, supply chains and the developing world. In terms of scale and timing, the 28-year period from now until 2050 is not adequate to achieve net- zero emissions, considering the scale of investments required, the availability of land, the required massive expansion of the electricity grid and a host of nearly 400 milestones that would need to be reached to achieve the net-zero goal.
“The last transition took nearly 200 years to cycle through, and now we want to achieve an even more ambitious transition in less than 30 years! This is simply not realistic. Additionally, a swift transition to clean energy sources would be highly reliant on the steady, robust supply of critical minerals such as copper, cobalt, lithium, nickel and aluminium, many of which are produced in a geographically centralised area.
“We must also consider that the amount of mineral material needed to produce energy is higher than with fossil fuels. For example, a typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs than that required to power a conventional vehicle with fossil fuels, and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant of the same capacity. Furthermore, lengthy lead times on mining projects, which can surpass 16 years, could inhibit the sector from responding to increases in demand.
“Finally, the net-zero scenario assumes that both developed and developing countries will achieve the proposed targets by 2050, with developed countries reaching their targets earlier. However, let me remind you that a staggering 790 million people worldwide did not have access to electricity in 2020, most of them located in Sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia. Moreover, there were roughly 2.6 billion people who did not have access to clean cooking fuels, 35 per cent of whom were in Sub-Saharan Africa, 25 per cent in India and 15 per cent in China. And, let us not forget that these are the very regions that are expected to see the most rapid population growth by 2050.
“This brings me to the critical topic of energy transition financing, which will be a highly debated issue at the upcoming COP26 in November. The achievement of the net-zero 2050 goals would assume that developing countries will receive the required financing and technological know-how they require to build and readjust their energy systems in line with the net-zero ambitions by 2050.
“However, climate financing for adaptation and mitigation is an extremely complex process, and questions continue to be raised as to how the $100 billion per year committed in the Paris Agreement will be secured, much less the even more ambitious $5 trillion annual funding needed globally as set out by the net-zero 2050 plan.
“Another issue of concern is that climate financing is increasingly being administered as loans, which means that developing countries are required to borrow at interest rates that can sometimes be prohibitively high, effectively leading them to defer or cancel their clean energy projects. These important factors all point to the fact that an energy transition on such a massive scale and within such a short timeframe will take time and patience to achieve, especially if it is done responsibly, in an equitable and inclusive manner,” Barkindo said.