Dangerous climate change will be "locked in" within little more than five years and there are few reasons to hope of international action to stop this happening, said the International Energy Agency Wednesday.
Dangerous climate change will be "locked in" within little
more than five years and there are few reasons to hope of international action
to stop this happening, said the International Energy Agency Wednesday.
To prevent average global temperatures rising more than 2 Celsius above
pre-industrial levels in the long term, which is widely seen as the safe limit,
the world would have to make immediate and drastic changes to its energy and
industrial policies, the IEA said in its annual long-term forecast.
That looks increasingly unlikely given the current economic problems and the
move away from low-carbon nuclear power in some countries after the
Fukushima
disaster, it said.
The report is intended as a wake-up call for the governments of many developed
countries, where promises to invest to curb carbon dioxide emissions have
failed to acquire legislative urgency. It also shows the huge challenge posed
by rapidly rising use of fossil fuels, particularly coal, in fast-growing
emerging economies.
"The door to reach two degrees is about to close. In 2017 it will be
closed forever," said Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA, in an
interview with Dow Jones Newswires. To stop this happening would require a
swift, legally binding agreement to put a price on carbon, Birol said.
World leaders will meet later this month in
Durban
,
South
Africa
, to discuss action to curb
emissions. "Given the current preoccupation of governments with the
financial crisis, it's difficult to say that the wind is blowing in the right
direction," Birol said.
The IEA said the problem is twofold. Carbon dioxide emissions, largely from
coal burning in
India
and
China
,
continue to grow rapidly. They increased by an "almost unprecedented"
5.3% to 30.4 billion metric tons in 2010, capping a decade of booming coal use,
the IEA said.
At the same time, many countries are reappraising their commitment to renewable
energy, because of the cost of subsidies, or to nuclear power, because of the
nuclear disaster in
Japan
earlier
this year, Birol said.
If every country were to back away from nuclear power, its generation capacity
would fall 15% by 2035, the IEA said. The gap would largely be filled by
carbon-spewing coal and gas plants, it said.
Even if all countries follow through on promises they have already made to curb
emissions and invest in clean energy and nuclear power, many of which have been
placed in doubt by the current economic distress, temperatures will still
eventually rise by 3.5 Celsius, the IEA said.
An increase of this size would have severe consequences including a sea level
rise of up to 2 meters causing dislocation of human settlements; and drought,
floods and heat waves that would severely affect food production, rates of
disease and mortality, the IEA said.
Limiting the increase in temperatures to 2 Celsius would require the reversal
of several of the strongest trends in energy consumption.
The use of both coal and oil, which together provided 60% of world energy in
2009, would need to start falling by 2016, the IEA said. Under current trends,
coal and oil use are forecast to rise by 60% and 25% respectively between 2009
and 2035.
At the same time, rate of increase in energy efficiency and the amount of
energy generated by wind, wave and solar and nuclear power will have to
increase dramatically, the IEA said. These changes would require an additional
$10.2 trillion of net investment in new energy infrastructure, it said.
Investment on this huge scale is not impossible, said the IEA's deputy Executive
Director, Richard Jones. "Most of the investment in electricity generation
is happening outside of the OECD, particularly in
China
and
India
,"
he said. "Those countries are still growing and they haven't been nearly
as affected by the global slowdown as OECD countries."
The money is concentrated in the right people's hands, but mobilizing it before
the 2017 deadline will take "significant political will," he said.
He was not optimistic that politicians will rise to the task. "[A
temperature increase of] somewhere between 2 Celsius and 3.5 Celsuis is
probably inevitable," Jones said.
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