VANCOUVER, B.C. — The world’s transition to clean-energy sources is falling behind what is needed to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goals, officials from 25 countries learned at the start of a major clean-energy conference in Vancouver.
Countries are on track in increasing solar-power generation and power-storage technologies, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) report unveiled Monday at the Clean Energy Ministerial and Mission Innovation conference.
However, global carbon emissions from power generation increased in 2017 and 2018 after three years of declining emissions, the IEA concluded, and countries are only on-track to meet their goals in seven of 45 categories that the IEA is tracking.
“Despite some positive developments over the past year, current technology deployment rates, policy ambition and industry efforts are still falling well-short,” according to the IEA report.
IEA executive director Fatih Birol was scheduled to be in attendance to help push attendees on progress, with Canada’s minister of Natural Resources, Amarjeet Sohi, as host of the event.
“Climate change and clean energy may be two of the biggest challenges of our generation, but they are also an opportunity,” Sohi said in his remarks to a pre-opening discussion on energy and Indigenous reconciliation. “An opportunity to drive innovation, to drive clean jobs and build a more sustainable and inclusive economy for generations to come.”
And Sohi said working with Aboriginal communities will remain a central part of “all energy decisions in this country.”
“Clean-energy opportunities are often decentralized and local, which is why community leadership is more important than ever,” and why he chose the session to be his first appearance at the conference.
The panel discussion, which saw a handful of community leaders share success stories about building renewable energy projects, was one of a handful of sessions that preceded Monday’s official opening where Sohi unveiled a new federal green-energy initiative.
Under the name Breakthrough Energy Solutions Canada, Sohi’s department will spend $30 million on cutting-edge research on electricity production, transportation and construction technologies for low-carbon alternatives to advance “a sustainable and resilient clean-energy future.”
The overall conference combines the 10th annual Clean Energy Ministerial meeting, an international gathering of energy ministers, industry executives and Mission Innovation, an initiative from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement aimed at increasing research into and reducing the cost of renewable energy.
Sohi is one of a handful of ministerial-level delegates to the conference, which includes delegations from countries including Australia, Austria, China, South Korea and Russia. The European Union is represented along with a strong list of nations such as Spain, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France and the U.K.
The conference includes the participation of observer groups such as the World Bank and International Energy Agency, and going into the event Birol expressed concern about global progress on clean-energy development.
“We need to do more to put the world on track to meet all (sustainable development) targets,” Birol said in a statement included with the IEA’s release of the report May 22. “I am particularly concerned by the dramatic lack of access to reliable, modern and sustainable energy in certain parts of the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.”
One positive note at the conference, however, was the IEA report released Monday showing that the world is on track for goals to promote the use of electric cars and trucks.
The IEA’s Mechthied Worsdoffer, director of sustainability, technology and outlooks, addressed the conference to reveal global manufacturers turned out a record 1.98 million electric cars in 2018, bringing the worldwide fleet of electrics to 5.12 million.
That is still only a small fraction of all the vehicles on the road, according to the agency, but sales in 2018 did increase by 68 per cent from the previous year with government incentives and policies being the biggest factors influencing adoption.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
