Policymakers Must Offer Clarity To Secure Net Zero

The PwC report, Inventing tomorrow’s energy system: The road ahead for molecules and electrons, finds that the growth in renewables, estimated to account for 90 percent of the global energy market by 2050, and scaling up of hydrogen, will lead to a greener but substantially more complex energy market. 

Electrons produced by renewables are set to power factories, heat and cool buildings, fill up batteries that will capture power and become generators, and, as electrification hits the transport sector, emerge as the major fuel for cars. Hydrogen will link the electricity and gas markets, allowing for large-scale storage, powering of heavy-transport, and the massive decarbonization of industrial power demand. Consequently, sectors such as oil and gas, utilities, and chemicals, which are currently sharply delineated, will begin to converge and form into integrated energy systems over the next decade.

This enormous shift in the global energy sector and the players within it will require greater coordination and collaboration between government and the market to successfully work towards a greener future. To meet global emissions targets, government and business must work together in new and untested ways to realize the full potential of renewables. Getting the energy transition right is not only critical from an environmental perspective, but also an economic one.