Technologies for the global energy transition

The availability of reliable, affordable and mature technologies is at the basis of an effective decarbonization strategy, that should be in turn supported by timely and accurate policies. Due to the large differences across sectors and countries, there is no silver bullet to support decarbonization, but a combination of multiple technologies will be required to reach the challenging goal of decarbonizing the energy sector. This chapter presents a focus on the current technological solutions that are available in four main sectors: power generation, industry, transport and buildings. The aim of this work is to highlight the main strengths and weaknesses of the current technologies, to help the reader in understanding which are the main opportunities and challenges related to the development and deployment of each of them, as well as their potential contribution to the decarbonization targets. The chapter also provides strategies and policy recommendations from a technology point of view on how to decarbonize the global energy systems by mid-century and of the necessity to take a systems approach.