Bridges Trade BioRes Review • Volume 2 • Number 4 • December 2008
International Energy Agency outlines climate mitigation scenarios
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The 2008 edition of the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook, released in mid-November, reaffirmed previous predictions about the world’s continued heavy reliance of fossil fuels. The agency somewhat scaled back its projected oil growth rates due to the current recession, and called for urgent action to address climate change.
”Current trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable - environmentally, economically and socially - they can and must be altered”, said Nobuo Tanaka, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Overall, the IEA projected that global energy demand will grow by 45 percent by 2030, implying a 1.6 percent annual increase. A third of this new demand will be met by coal.
As in previous years, the IEA juxtaposed “business as usual” projections of the global energy landscape in 2030 with those needed to actively address the very real threat of climate change. The report developed two different alternative scenarios, comprising the interventions necessary to contain global warming at plus two degrees Centigrade - a target embraced by the EU because it would allow the world to avoid the full force of “dangerous climate change” - and three degrees Centigrade, respectively. Under the “business as usual” scenario, run-away warming would amount to six degrees Centigrade, with catastrophic consequences for humanity, warned the IEA.
Stressing the importance of reaching an agreement at the upcoming meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen in December 2009, the World Energy Outlook noted the need for action not only on behalf of OECD-countries. In fact, in order to stay within the two degree target, emerging economies would have to curtail their emissions growth as well, with emissions peaking at around 2020. Even if OECD countries were to bring down their emissions to zero, this would not be enough without action on behalf of the emerging economies, the report says.
While staying clear of any suggestions for burden-sharing or financing arrangements, the IEA developed its global alternative policy scenarios based on low-carbon energy development. The most important measures related to increased energy efficiency. In reaching both the target of a maximum warming of two and three degrees, efficiency measures would contribute more than half of the necessary decarbonisation of growth. The following categories of measures, in order of importance, were renewables and biofuels, carbon capture and storage, and nuclear.
”We cannot let the financial and economic crisis delay the policy action that is urgently needed to ensure secure energy supplies and to curtail rising emissions of greenhouse gases,” stressed Tanaka. “We must usher in a global energy revolution by improving energy efficiency and increasing the deployment of low-carbon energy.”
More information on the World Energy Outlook at available online at http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/
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