IEA: Only Renewables and Electric Vehicles on Track for Clean Energy Goals, while Nuclear Lags Post-Fukushima

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven expressed concern over the slow progress being made to clean up energy systems at the fourth Clean Energy Ministerial Conference in New Delhi.

"The carbon intensity of the global energy supply has barely changed in 20 years, despite successful efforts in deploying renewable energy," van der Hoeven said. She added that progress toward clean energy had stalled and that market failures were preventing the adoption of clean energy solutions.

Nuclear power needs to provide 16% of generation by 2025 if global warming is to be limited to 2C (known as 2DS), reported the IEA. But to achieve this, the nuclear sector had to expand at a rate of at least 16 gigawatts (GW) capacity per year through 2020 and 20 GW per year after that--or even more, if current units cannot operate as long as expected.

In reality, the nuclear sector has only achieved 3.6 GW net growth on average over the last three years, taking into account the losses following the Fukushima disaster and the subsequent nuclear plant shutdowns in Germany.

New build progress also was hit after Fukushima. In 2010, 16 new nuclear projects were started, but in 2012 there were only seven new starts.

The IEA recommended that more favorable electricity market mechanisms and investment conditions were needed to ensure the necessary rate of new reactor construction. In liberalized markets where feed-in tariffs (FiTs) have been used to promote the deployment of renewable technologies, the profitability of dispatchable technologies has been degraded to the point where new investments are unlikely.

Only the deployment of renewable and electric vehicles were on track for 2DS goals, while global policies on nuclear, coal usage, carbon capture and storage, biofuels and building efficiency were all said to be failing by the IEA.

IEA member governments are responsible for 75% of global energy use.

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