Climate Fight Costs May Be Three Times More

PlanetArk 28 Nov 08;

LONDON - The cost of efforts to avoid dangerous global warming may be 170 percent higher than 2007 estimates, a report for the UN's climate agency said on Thursday.

The report comes four days before the UN leads a fresh round of talks in Poland to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol in ongoing negotiations marred by squabbles over who should bear the cost of fighting climate change.

The UN report cited research by the International Energy Agency (IEA), energy adviser to 28 countries, and others which showed growing capital costs especially in the energy sector.

"The increased investment needed is entirely due to higher capital costs for energy supply facilities," it said.

"This increases the scale of the challenge to generate additional investment and financial flows," said the study, titled "Investment and financial flows to address climate change: an update."

Growing capital costs are partly a result of unprecedented demand for gear such as wind turbines driven by climate and energy security policies.

Thursday's report was commissioned for the UN's climate change secretariat which leads the December 1-12 talks in Poznan, Poland.

The new report will add to concerns that a multi-trillion dollar bailout of the global economy in the past two months may have diverted too much cash away from the climate fight.

Last year the corresponding study estimated the additional investment required to cut greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter at $200-210 billion annually by 2030.

That estimate included only the capital cost of measures including efficiency improvements to buildings and more low-carbon power including nuclear and renewable energy.

It excluded other costs such as R&D as well as the benefit of fuel savings from improved efficiency.

However more recent studies in 2008 showed higher estimates. A report on technology transfer also for the UN climate agency estimated total finance needs of $300-1,000 billion annually over the period from now to 2030.

The IEA estimated annual additional investments in technologies to fight climate change at $1,000 billion annually from 2010-2050.

Cost of reducing emissions by 2030 likely to surge: UN report
Yahoo News 28 Nov 08;

PARIS (AFP) – Hundreds of billions more dollars are likely to be needed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by a 2030 target, according to UN estimates published on Friday ahead of global talks on climate change.

The report, to be presented at the December 1-12 conference in Poznan, Poland updates 2007 estimates that said investment to mitigate carbon emissions had to be ramped up in the coming years, reaching between 200-210 billion dollars annually in 2030.

The goal, in this benchmark scenario, is to reduce levels of global-warming pollution to 25 percent below 2000 levels in 2030.

In the new report, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said the emissions goal was virtually unchanged.

But it said the estimates of financial needs for mitigation had been revised sharply upwards -- by "about 170 percent."

It cited "higher projected capital costs," especially in the energy sector, to introduce solar panels and fuel cells that had yet to become competitive with fossil fuels.

There was also the potential bill for implementing carbon storage, a technology that is still at the pilot stage, said the report.

Under carbon storage, carbon dioxide (CO2) is captured from big polluting sources such as coal-fired power plants, rather than released into the atmosphere where it would add to the greenhouse-gas effect.

Instead, the CO2 would be pumped deep below ground, in disused gas fields or other geological chambers and stored there indefinitely.

Most the funding needs will have to be focussed in developing countries, the UNFCCC report said.

China has now outstripped the United States as the world's No. 1 carbon emitter, and India is set to become third largest, according to estimates released in September by the research consortium the Global Carbon Project.

The UNFCCC report said that its estimates for funding needs to help poor countries adapt to the impact of global warming were unchanged over 2007, "and remain in the tens of billions, possibly hundreds of billions of dollars, every year."

The Poznan talks are a stepping stone towards a new pact, due to be sealed in Copenhagen in December 2009, for reducing emissions and boosting adaptation funds beyond 2012, when the current provisions of the UN's Kyoto Protocol expire.