The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that global progress towards energy efficiency has dropped to the slowest rate in a decade.
“As a result of the crisis and continuing low energy prices, energy intensity is expected to improve by only 0.8% in 2020, roughly half the rates, corrected for weather, for 2019 (1.6%) and 2018 (1.5%),” the IEA wrote. “This is well below the level needed to achieve global climate and sustainability goals.
“It is especially worrying because energy efficiency delivers more than 40% of the reduction in energy-related greenhouse gas emissions over the next 20 years in the IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario, which shows how to put the world on track to achieve international climate and energy goals in full,” it added.
Investments in new energy-efficient buildings, equipment, and vehicles are expected to fall in 2020, with economic growth expected to fall by 4.6%. Technical efficiency improvements have also been delayed due to the pandemic.
“We welcome plans by governments to boost spending on energy efficiency in response to the economic crisis, but what we have seen so far is uneven and far from enough,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA.
“Energy efficiency should be at the top of to-do lists for governments pursuing a sustainable recovery – it is a jobs machine, it gets economic activity going, it saves consumers money, it modernises vital infrastructure and it reduces emissions.”
