Launch of the Global Energy Assessment
Pathways to a sustainable Energy system
GEA is the first ever fully integrated energy assessment that analyzes energy challenges, opportunities and strategies, for developing, industrialized and emerging economies. The report was coordinated by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis IIASA and led by more than 500 of the world's leading energy experts from research, business, industry and politics from 70 countries.
A major finding of the GEA is that some energy options provide multiple benefits. This is particularly true of energy efficiency, renewables, and the co-production of synthetic transportation fuels, cooking fuels, and electricity with CCS, which offer advantages in terms of supporting all of the goals related to economic growth, jobs, energy security, local and regional environmental benefits, health, and climate change mitigation.
The GEA explores sixty alternative energy transformation pathways and finds that forty-one of these pathways simultaneously satisfy the following goals:
- Universal access to affordable modern energy carriers and end-use conversion (especially electricity and clean cooking) by 2030;
- Enhanced energy security at regional and national levels;
- Climate change mitigation (contain global mean temperature increase to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with a probability of at least 50%); and
- Improved human and environmental health by controlling household and ambient air pollution, ocean acidification, and deforestation.
The GEA considers all aspects of energy, inclusive of sectors that intersect with the energy system (such as health, water, transport, building, land-use, and forestry) and offers direction for all sectors and regions on how to achieve necessary reforms.
Source: Source: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) [1]