Assessing Zero Emissions Energy Transitions: A Systemic View
The Paris Agreement, demanding full decarbonization, necessitates energy transitions that entail the transformation of existing carbon-based systems into zero-carbon counterparts. Such transformations span the realms of production, distribution, transportation, and consumption across various sectors (Victor et al., 2019). These transitions involve disentangling carbon-based energy technologies from their infrastructural, market, and societal contexts, replacing them with configurations suited for zero-carbon energy technologies and related systems. Energy transitions encompass both large-scale transformations across sectors and the specific systems of energy services within sectors, such as heating, transportation, and electricity (Fouquet, 2016).
Unlike changes in individual elements of a system, energy transitions necessitate a fundamental overhaul of the entire system itself, driven by the long-term goal of complete decarbonization. Even when modifications to the system result in reduced GHG emissions, such as switching to lower-carbon fossil fuels, it may not align with the pathway to a fully decarbonized system (Lilliestam et al., 2022). While this does not mean that transitions evolve in a linear way, it points to the necessity of evaluating change from a system-level perspective and keeping in mind the goal of zero-carbon systems.
The purpose-driven nature of today’s transitions, aimed at eliminating GHG emissions, distinguishes them from past transitions (Geels et al., 2017). Governments, businesses, and societies must take deliberate and stringent actions to drive these transitions, mitigating the most dire consequences of global warming. While technological innovation remains central, its potential must be harnessed more systematically and on a larger scale.
Given the compressed timeframe compared to historical transitions, the effectiveness and adequacy of government-implemented public policies are paramount (Fouquet, 2016). In both public discourse and energy policy analysis, observers often gauge policy success and transition progress in various sectors by examining the development of GHG emissions (Velten, 2021). Emission reductions undeniably constitute a key outcome metric for decarbonization efforts. However, the challenge goes beyond emission reduction; it necessitates the complete elimination of emissions over the long term by establishing new systems for producing, consuming, and transporting goods and services (Lilliestam et al., 2022; Velten et al., 2021). In this context, measuring emissions alone offer limited value as they fail to provide insights into the progress made in the areas where system transformations are needed the most (Hanna & Victor, 2021).
This highlights the need for appropriate metrics and analytical frameworks to assess transition progress, evaluate policy effectiveness, identify drivers and barriers, and guide future actions. Several governments, including France, the Netherlands, the UK, Hungary, and Sweden, have developed evaluation frameworks. However, the breadth of scope, the diversity of indicators used, and the lack of clear connections between different indicators often complicate the interpretability of results and international comparisons.
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