At 24 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions per year, 40 percent of the global total, the power sector is the single highest hurdle between the world and net zero. We count on electricity to light our offices, heat our homes, and cook our food. We also need it to charge our growing fleet of electric vehicles.
Electricity is not a source but a carrier of energy. As long as it derives from fossil fuels, whatever we electrify will not be emissions-free. But electricity doesn’t require combustion. It can be generated by wind or sunlight, by water pressure, by the splitting of atoms, or by the heat beneath the Earth’s surface.
To achieve our objective to decarbonize the grid, the world’s power sector must slash its emissions by nearly 90 percent by 2050, to just 3 gigatons. We can get there by achieving the following seven key results.
