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Clues About Trump Effect on Global Energy Lurk in IEA Data

Clues About Trump Effect on Global Energy Lurk in IEA Data

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump’s doubts about climate change and hostility to renewable energy are clear, but the precise impact of his presidency on the global energy mix is harder to divine. An annual data dump from the International Energy Agency offers some clues.

Clues About Trump Effect on Global Energy Lurk in IEA Data

The World Energy Outlook from the IEA -- a policy adviser to 29 nations including the U.S. -- outlines three possibilities. The principal scenario, called New Policies, assumes signatories to last year’s Paris climate agreement keep their pledges and begin to curb emissions. That still falls well short of a second potential outcome in which a dangerous 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in global temperatures is prevented.

The report doesn’t mention Trump and IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said Wednesday that it’s too early to gauge the policy implications of his victory. Nevertheless, the president-elect’s clearest-stated intentions -- to back out of the Paris deal and rescind President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan -- would be similar to the third scenario, in which little is done to tackle climate change beyond current policies.

Clues About Trump Effect on Global Energy Lurk in IEA Data

Failure to implement U.S. climate and clean power pledges would weaken, but not reverse, the trends that made coal the biggest loser in the nation’s energy mix under Obama. By 2040, the amount of electricity generated from coal would fall 21 percent from 2014 levels, smaller than the 41 percent drop if new policies including the Paris accord and CPP were implemented, IEA data show. Natural gas would get a boost, rising 56 percent in the former scenario compared with 27 percent in the latter. Growth in wind and solar power -- where costs are falling as adoption spreads -- would slow, but only marginally.

Clues About Trump Effect on Global Energy Lurk in IEA Data

All of that would leave the U.S. well short of meaningful action to prevent global warming. It would achieve a 10 percent reduction in emissions from 2014 levels by 2040, compared with a 67 percent cut needed to keep the temperature increase within 2 degrees Celsius. Trump could go even further by weakening federal support for clean energy or regulations to improve vehicle efficiency.

Clues About Trump Effect on Global Energy Lurk in IEA Data

The U.S. abandoning leadership on climate change could leave the global consensus achieved in Paris in tatters. China and India, the world’s largest and third-biggest national polluters that for the first time last year made commitments to curb their own emissions, could have little incentive to stick to the agreement.

Clues About Trump Effect on Global Energy Lurk in IEA Data

It took more than two decades to negotiate the Paris climate agreement. A global failure to follow through on it could transform the long-term outlook for fossil fuels, confounding the growing number of predictions that demand for oil and coal is on the verge of peaking.

Clues About Trump Effect on Global Energy Lurk in IEA Data

The world would be left with an energy system far from where it needs to be to avoid a temperature increase that could trigger rising sea levels, superstorms and deadly drought. Coal’s share of global energy use would be more than double the necessary level, low-carbon nuclear and renewables would be half as big as required and annual CO2 emissions would be more than double the target, IEA data show.

--With assistance from Jessica Shankleman and Javier Blas To contact the reporter on this story: James Herron in London at jherron9@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Herron at jherron9@bloomberg.net, Alex Devine