In this context, natural gas is expected to be a complementary fuel to support renewables throughout the transition. The Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to 1.5 °C, signed in 2015 accelerated the speed of transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. This legally binding international treaty on climate change requires a 45% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions from 2010 levels by 2030 and sets a net-zero emission target to be achieved by 2050 (IPCC et al., 2018). The large carbon dioxide-emitting countries and several signatory countries have already declared national targets in line with their commitments to global climate action under this agreement (IRENA, 2021). Among them, the EU set the most ambitious targets in its comprehensive green development plan called the European Green Deal (EGD) with an objective of decreasing CO2 emission by 55% by 2030 and achieving zero net emission by 2050 (EC, 2021).
The plan, which was unveiled in December 2019, was supported by the European Council, and in January 2020, by the European Parliament (European Interest, 2020). The European Climate Law, which writes into law the goal set out in the EGD, was accepted in June 2021. However, despite all determinations and efforts, global emissions are continually increasing, and as correctly noted in the recent trends show that the gap between where we are and where we should be is not decreasing but widening. We are heading in the wrong direction.
It is obvious that to achieve a well-below 2 °C world, the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels is critical (Luderer et al., 2018; Tong et al., 2019; Pye et al., 2020). This has already been acknowledged in the EGD plan, which accordingly proposed policies such as “ending fossil fuel subsidies”, “phasing-out financing by multilateral institutions of fossil fuel infrastructure”, “phasing-out of fossil fuels”, and “phasing out all new coal plant construction” (EC, 2019, p. 18, 21). IEA (2017) also suggested OECD countries stop the use of coal power generation by 2030.
However, the global realities are far from the targets to achieve zero emissions by 2050, which requires a complete transition from fossil fuels to renewables. As correctly stated by Yergin (2021) “Throughout history, energy transitions have been difficult, and this one is even more challenging than any previous shift” because the past energy transitions have always been “energy additions—one source atop another” but this time “it is supposed to be an almost complete switch.” At present, the dependency of global energy system on fossil fuels is 83.2% (31.3% oil, 27.2% coal, and 24.7% natural gas) and it is very difficult -if not impossible-to give up using all of them in about three decades.
Despite these arguments, the fact is that technologies that capture and convert renewable energy have physical and chemical limits and today's state-of-the-art commercial wind and PVs achieved conversion efficiency—close to their theoretical limits. Until today, humans have not been able to design a wind turbine, whose efficiency exceeds the Betz limit, which is 16/27 (about 59.3%), and turbines today exceed 45% efficiency, making additional gains difficult to achieve.
Therefore, a plan to globally phase out of fossil fuels by 2050, which consists of 83.2% of the global primary energy supply today, is not realistic. It seems that one or more fossil fuels and/or nuclear energy should accompany renewable energy until the ongoing energy transition is completed. Having realized this fact, the European Commission (EC) published in March 2020 the EU Taxonomy, a classification system of economic activities that can be considered environmentally sustainable (Lucarelli et al., 2020). The EC published in February 2022 the second delegated act of the EU Taxonomy Regulation, which extended its green finance criteria to nuclear and natural gas-fired power despite objections from NGOs, investors, member states, and its own expert groups (Brooks, 2022). The EC's newly adopted Complementary Climate Delegated Act (CDA) labeled some nuclear and gas energy activity as climate-friendly investments by adding them to the “transitional package” (Patel, 2022).
Natural gas (NG) is certainly the best alternative to support renewable energy development and will play an important role in the global transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon energy system (Zou et al., 2016; Kan et al., 2019). NG and renewable energy can safely be used together to make the transition easier (Makarov and Makarov, 2010). It is the cleanest and most environmentally friendly fossil fuel and can be used with high efficiency because of its relatively high atomic hydrogen-to-carbon ratio .
A Guest Editorial