Greening energy systems by 2050 for a ‘net’ Zero Carbon future
by Aoife M. Foley

ABSTRACT

The Paris Agreement prioritises urgent finance, technology, and capacity-building to rapidly deploy low-carbon renewable energy technologies. The aim of which is to ensure a resilient, safe, and sustainable society that can respond effectively to the challenges and opportunities of climate change. As renewable energy steadily grows globally, at all levels, then energy system security and energy supply rules for governments, regulators, producers, and end-users will need to be re-evaluated.

However, current whole energy system analyses are high level and tend to focus on quantifying energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This high level approach can be useful to inform general sectoral policy making, but does not assess the intersystem impacts to inform regulatory actions. We now need new co-disciplinary approaches based on PESTEL that cross traditional discipline boundaries. This opinion-based seminar 1) discusses the current status quo of energy systems analysis, and 2) suggests some collaborative work we can do as academics to successfully combat rapid climate change within the context of a global just transition by 2050.