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Physically consistent sectoral pathways for phasing out fossil fuels
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Abstract
The transition away from fossil fuels relies on electricity-producing renewable energy sources. To understand how much electricity is needed to substitute fossil fuels, sectors of the economy being electrified must be analysed discretely, as their suitability for electrification varies significantly. Constructing, operating, and maintaining these renewable power plants requires substantial amounts of energy. Here, we propose a model which calculates the electricity required to electrify each major sector, and quantifies the energy required to deploy the renewable power plants producing this electricity. We apply this model to the European Union across scenarios phasing out fossil fuels by 2035, 2050, 2075, and 2100. We find that transition energy requirements increase with transition speed and that they are greater than the current energy spent on obtaining fossil fuels in all scenarios. We also reveal the energy requirements of each sector, disaggregated into categories (power plants, grid extensions, and end-use devices) allowing for a comparative analysis of their relative significance. We produce quantitative evidence supporting the emerging conceptual consensus that a rapid energy transition will require reallocating significant amounts of energy from other end uses to transition-related uses. This could lead to societal disruptions, as part of some energy-dependent services (e.g., transport, residential heating, manufacturing etc.) will have to be forgone to carve an energy budget for the transition. Our model can provide quantitative insights into the extent of these disruptions, and support policy- and decision-making to mitigate them.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.31223/X5Q723
Subjects
Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Keywords
Energy Transition, energy requirements, fossil fuel phase out, Physical model, sectoral electrification
Dates
Published: 2025-03-18 23:28
Last Updated: 2025-03-18 23:28
License
CC BY Attribution 4.0 International
Additional Metadata
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Data Availability (Reason not available):
All data and supplementary information will be made available upon request. The code used for the model will be made available upon request.
There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.