Fossil fuel is on its way out. Most countries, even oil-rich states are slowly but steadily shifting to green power as they grapple with the scale and scope of ecological disasters (climate change and global warming) caused by oil and its manifestations, a lecturer at Sharif University of Technology said.
“The future belongs to nations that set informed and long-term policies based on sustainable energy and net zero-carbon emissions, not those still pinning hope on petrodollars contributing terribly to health and environmental problems with catastrophic consequences,” Barg News quoted Hashem Oraee as saying.
Fossil fuels could last three decades at the most because the speed of developing technologies as a viable successor is high and rising, Oraee who also is the head of Renewable Energy Union, said.
“Up until 2050 the global need for power will double and reach 1.2 terawatts of which 60% will be renewable energy.”
Simply put, oil demand may climb for two more decades and then start to dwindle gradually as green energy emerges as the dominant player, he said.
The professor, who chairs the Wind Energy Scientific Society, believes replacing oil and gas with clean energy is a long-term scheme and demands vision and effective planning.
Moreover, massive energy policies call for a paradigm shift and policymakers must have the courage to make tough decisions, one of which is to get rid of costly and unsustainable energy subsidies.
“Supplying power plants subsidized mazut and gas is a wrong policy because the output will never get the value due to cheap prices,” he warned.
Fossil fuels should be sold to petrochemical plants for making value-added goods, he stressed. Iran’s energy subsidy is close to $30 billion a year, which by any leap of imagination is unsustainable.
Close to 98% of Iran’s power demand is met by oil derivatives and gas. This is while more countries are rewriting energy policies and moving towards renewables to save lives and cut costs.
Referring to the Rouhani administration’s decision to exempt households that use electricity within a certain limit from paying their bills, Oraee said such “political gestures” are good only for the short term.
Free Electricity!
“Providing free power is to encourage consumption and will not convince households to rethink their profligate consumption.”
Electricity is heavily subsidized in Iran. Power generation cost, including production and transmission, is 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, but is sold at 0.7 cents per kWh.
Iran has huge potential for renewables, including geothermal, solar and wind power, environmentalists and experts say. “What is rather quaint is that although solar photovoltaic and wind power are rapidly getting cheaper and are on track to displace fossil fuel worldwide within two or three decades, some [Iranian] politicians insist on expanding thermal power.”
According to the university teacher, solar and wind farms are gradually increasing in the Middle East while fossil fuel plants retire. In 2019, wind (9.1GW) and solar (5.3GW) represented 62% of all new generating capacity in the region, compared to 8.3GW of natural gas.
Furthermore, the number of renewable energy jobs worldwide could more than triple, reaching 42 million by 2050, while energy-efficiency jobs would grow six-fold, employing over 21 million more people. By contrast, the fossil fuel industry is expected to lose over 6 million jobs in the same period, even without the impact of the deadly coronavirus.
Solar projects in Chile, the Middle East and China, or wind projects in Brazil, Turkey and India, are approaching figures lower than $30/MWh, lower than the cost of building and producing power from plants that use gas.
By 2030, innovations are likely to reduce costs further. The cost of energy globally for onshore wind and utility-scale solar is now $44 and $50/MWh, compared to $100 and $300/MWh a decade ago.
The bottom line is that renewable energy is not perfect. No form of energy is. But developing clean energy is far better than continuing down the path of polluting fossil fuels that kill at least 40,000 people in countries like Iran. Renewable energy is, and should be, an integral part of what is needed to address the urgent and important air pollution menace.
