With the adoption of carbon neutrality policies, an increasing number of countries have implemented diverse measures to facilitate the energy transition away from fossil fuels. However, ascertaining the efficacy of these measures toward meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement and carbon neutrality has emerged as a critical concern in recent years.
In a new journal article published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Ye Qi, Jiaqi Lu, and Tianle Liu offer a comprehensive review of worldwide energy transitions to carbon neutrality and introduce the Decarbonization Index (DCI), an innovative indicator designed to gauge the progress of a nation’s energy transition.
The DCI quantifies the extent to which a country moves from the most carbon-intensive energy practices, enhancing a quantitative grasp of energy transition logic and its connection to industrial evolution. The strength of the DCI rests in its ability to encapsulate the essence of energy decarbonization: the reduction of carbon in energy consumption. It establishes a definitive baseline for monitoring decarbonization efforts, thereby framing the historical evolution of energy transitions and providing comparative standards for policy formulation. Using the DCI, the authors evaluate the carbon neutrality efforts of the 15 highest carbon-emitting nations that have declared carbon neutrality agendas.
Their findings reveal that South Africa, Japan, and Germany require the highest annual growth rates in DCI to achieve carbon neutrality, while France and Brazil are the most likely to attain this goal, given their substantial noncarbon energy sources such as hydropower and nuclear power. The authors also uncover a general trend that the current business-as-usual scenarios are insufficient to meet carbon neutrality objectives, underscoring an urgent call for accelerated global energy transition efforts. Therefore, they suggest policymakers must develop proper tools and take firm actions to accelerate the energy transitions in order to fulfill their climate pledges.