The climate crisis is palpable: According to the United Nations, storms, wildfires, droughts and other extreme weather phenomena fueled by climate change have hit 4.5 billion people in the past 20 years, and a study from the German insurance company Munich RE showed that the cost of these disasters in 2018 alone amounted to US$160 billion. The continued projections of damage caused by the emission of greenhouse gases are dire and incalculable: rising global temperatures, shrinking glaciers, warmer oceans, vanishing coastlines, and increasing natural catastrophes.
Curbing the greenhouse effect has become one, if not the decisive factor for energy policies worldwide. In an effort to limit global warming to well below 2 °C above preindustrial levels, the Paris Agreement negotiated at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference requires zero net emissions by 2045 to 2060. One hundred and seventy-four countries have signed the treaty, but political pressure in industrialized countries is mounting to increase the speed of transformation. In October 2018, the International Panel on Climate Change (ICPP) further reiterated the need for decarbonization and recommended an even more challenging target of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C by the end of the century, further increasing the pressure for transformation.
Enormous efforts and investments have been made to increase the share of electricity from renewables in the power sector up to 25 percent globally in 2017 but with little impact on global carbon emissions. As the power sector contributes to global CO2 emissions by only 40 percent, little progress in decarbonizing the remaining 60 percent from other sectors such as transportation, buildings, industry, and others has been seen. In fact, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to peak year on year with a record increase of 1.7 percent in 2018.