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Decarbonising transport is central to achieving Europe’s policy commitments on climate change. T ransport is expected to deliver a 60% greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target of the EU for 2050. Achieving these commitments is expected to require a complete decarbonisation of the passenger car fleet. The more ambitious COP21 commitment to limit temperature rises to 1.5°C will also likely demand a complete decarbonisation of transport by 2050.

Attaining a 100% ZEV fleet by 2050 will require all new car sales to be ZEV by 2035 (assuming a similar vehicle life-time as today) and a substantially faster introduction of ZEVs and PHEVs than current policy and likely 2025 policies will achieve .

Compared to the CO2 emission reductions targeted in the current EU plan, the transition to a 100% ZEV car fleet by 2050 will result in an additional reduction of the cumulative CO2 emissions in the period 2020 and 2050 of 2.2 to 3.9 gigatonnes. The current EU White Paper for T ransport, targets to reduce the transport emissions by 60% compared to 1990.

Europe could switch to low carbon sources of electricity, with up to 100% coming from renewables by 2050, without risking energy reliability or pushing up energy bills, according to a major new study, Roadmap 2050: a practical guide to a prosperous, low-carbon Europe, developed by the European Climate Foundation (ECF) with contributions from McKinsey, KEMA, Imperial College London and Oxford Economics. It says that a transition to a low- or zero-carbon power supply based on high levels of renewable energy would have no impact on reliability, and would have little overall impact on the cost of generating electricity.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) presented two new solar energy analyses in Valencia, Spain this week, a Solar Photovoltaic Energy Technology Roadmap and a Concentrating Solar Power Technology Roadmap. The key finding from these is that 20-25% of global electricity production could be from solar energy by 2050.

Denmark's Parliament has passed the most ambitious green economy plan in the world: it will generate 35% of its energy from renewable energy by 2020 and 100% by 2050.

The study prepared by the European and international climate experts at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, the European Climate Forum, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the International Institute for Applied System Analysis, examines the potential for powering Europe and North Africa with renewable electricity exclusively by 2050 and the opportunities this transformation to the power sector presents.  The study provides policy makers and business leaders with clear direction and a step wise approach on how to achieve the 2050 vision.

The Roadmap 2050 project sets out the crucial role of a zero-carbon power sector to Europe’s long-term climate commitments and shows different pathways that can make this a reality delivering economic and energy security goals. The Roadmap is based on extensive technical, economic and policy analyses conducted by five leading consultancies: Imperial College London, KEMA, McKinsey & Company, Oxford Economics, and the Office of Metropolitan Architecture, in addition to the involvement of utilities, transmission operators and NGOs.

In 2007, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) released its first “Prism” model and Model for Estimating the Regional and Global Effects of Greenhouse Gas Reductions (MERGE). 

EPRI updated both analyses in 2009 to reflect economic and technological changes that have the potential to affect projected emissions and the technologies to address them. 

The Prism analysis projects that by 2030, 60% of the total U.S. generation mix would consist of low- or non-CO2 emitting generation

It’s worth noting that there are other views of the situation. Late last week I talked with University of Toronto professor Danny Harvey, author of a set of comprehensive textbooks on energy demand and clean energy supply. He says Baksi/Green’s conclusion on energy intensity is “complete nonsense.” He’s done some detailed modeling and believes that “between now and 2050, we can average 3 or 4 percent [decline in global energy intensity] a year,” and thereby reducing total energy use. The efforts required would be heroic, but within the realm of possibility.

In this ‘green’ future, electricity will comprise 40-70% of energy consumption, up from around 20% now. And a large part of this electricity will come from offshore wind farms, which the report highlights as an economically viable option for Denmark.The Klimakomissionen says many more turbines will have to be erected to cover up to half of the country’s energy consumption.Meanwhile, the energy system will have to become much more flexible and intelligent to cope with the fluctuation of wind energy.Technologies such as smart electricity meters, time-controlled recharging for electric cars and heat pumps in combination with heat storage systems will be crucial to the new energy order.The report says that biomass will play an important role as back up to wind power and to supply heating for homes, along with solar heating, geothermal energy and heat pumps, which will serve district heating systems.