SCIENCE@home

Climate Risks of the Transition to a Renewable Energy Society: The Need for Extending the Research Agenda

C. Aall,Tarje I. Wanvik,B. Dale

Published 2022 in Weather, Climate, and Society

ABSTRACT

To reach the 1.5-2-degree goal of the Paris Agreement, the speed of transition to a renewable energy society must increase significantly. Applying Perrow’s theory of societal risk, we argue that switching from a fossil-based to a future 100 percent renewable energy system may increase climate risks. Reviewing policy and research literature, and interviewing key energy policy actors in Norway, we find that there is limited knowledge on this topic, and that the knowledge that does exist suffers from several shortcomings. Climate risks are generally discussed by applying future climate to the current energy system, thus failing to consider climate vulnerabilities caused by the ongoing energy transition. Also, discussions are frequently limited to sub-system as opposed to system reflections, and mostly present supply- as opposed to demand-side perspectives. Most of the policy actors conclude that a future 100 percent renewable energy system will mainly benefit from climate change and reduce rather than increase climate risks. A research agenda is proposed to gain a better understanding of how the ongoing energy transitions can affect climate risks, especially to address the potential that reducing the level of energy consumption, diversifying energy sources, and prioritizing short-traveled energy can have to reduce climate risk in high consuming countries.

PUBLICATION RECORD

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-36 of 36 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-7 of 7 citing papers · Page 1 of 1