Global economic crisis to slash carbon emissions: IEA

Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 6 Oct 09;

BANGKOK (AFP) – The global economic crisis will slash carbon emissions in 2009, opening a narrow opportunity to take decisive action on global warming, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.

The predicted three percent fall in energy-related CO2 pollution compared with a year earlier would be the steepest drop in 40 years, chief IEA economist Fatih Birol said at a press conference in Bangkok.

The global carbon output up to now has on average grown three percent annually, he added.

Birol said this silver-lining drop in carbon pollution was a "unique window of opportunity" for the world to put itself on a path to limit the increase in global temperatures to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the scientific threshold for dangerous global warming.

The recession-driven fall would lead to CO2 emissions in 2020 being five percent lower than the IEA forecast from just a year ago, even if no further action is taken to curb global warming, he added.

The IEA estimate is part of its World Energy Outlook report, an excerpt of which was released at UN climate talks under way in the Thai capital.

It outlined how steeply countries would have to cut their energy-related carbon emissions over the next 20 years in order fix the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at a level that would ensure the two-degree threshold is not crossed.

That level, measured in parts per million, is 450 ppm, according to a benchmark scientific report issued in 2007 by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"This gives us a chance to make real progress toward a clean-energy future, but only if the right policies are put in place promptly," said IEA executive director Nobuo Tanaka in a statement.

"Every year of delay adds an extra 500 billion dollars (340 billion euros) to the investment needed between 2010 and 2030 in the energy sector," he warned.

Energy production accounts for about 65 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the IEA.

The climate talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have been stymied for months, and are running out of time to deliver a new global climate treaty at a December conference in Copenhagen.

Rich and poor nations are divided over how to share the burden of cutting greenhouse gases, and who is going to pay for it.

Developed nations are willing to take the lead, but expect emerging giants such as Brazil, India and China to commit to mitigation measures as well -- pledges these countries have fiercely resisted.

Rich nations created the problem and should bear the brunt of the responsibility to fix it, the developing countries say.

"Continuing the current energy policies would have catastrophic consequences for the climate," said UNFCCC chief Yvo de Boer. "This is a unique opportunity... to transition the global energy system."

In Stockholm, Brazil's president urged the United States, China and others to do their share to reduce greenhouse gases so that the key Copenhagen summit could be a success.

"If we solve a little bit the US issue, and Obama tries to convince his Congress and the Senate" to accept more ambitious climate objectives, "then things can advance," Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva said.

The IEA's Tanaka confirmed that China had overtaken the United States as the world's top carbon polluter in 2007, adding that "it will be the same in the future."

While it has not announced an emission reductions target, if China fulfils its energy efficiency plans it would account for a quarter of the global effort needed by 2020 under the IEA scenario for stabilising CO2 levels, he said.

"It would put China at the forefront of the fight against climate change," Birol told AFP.

Downturn is 'climate opportunity'
Richard Black, BBC News 6 Oct 09;

The global recession provides a window of opportunity to curb climate change and build a low-carbon future, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).

It calculates that global greenhouse gas emissions will fall by 3% this year - an increase on previous estimates.

If governments take this opportunity to invest in clean technology, the global temperature rise can be kept below the G8 goal of 2C (3.6F), the agency says.

The findings were released at UN climate talks in Bangkok.

"The message is simple and stark: if the world continues on the basis of today's energy and climate policies, the consequences of climate change will be severe," said IEA executive director Nobuo Tanaka.

"Energy is at the heart of the problem - and so must form the core of the solution."

The recession is likely to mean emissions being 3% lower this year than last - and it will have a longer term impact, the IEA says, with emissions in 2020 projected to be 5% less than they would have been without an economic dip.

The biggest carbon cuts will come from improving energy efficiency, it says.

Slash, not burn

The agency presents a series of policy measures for different regions of the world and for countries at various stages of economic development.

Its prescription would lead to greenhouse gas concentrations being stabilised at the equivalent of 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide - a level that, according to some analyses, offers a good chance that the rise in the global average temperature since pre-industrial times could be kept within 2C.

Without these policies, the agency calculates that concentrations will soar to 1,000ppm by mid-century - levels that, in many scientists' views, would lead to catastrophic and irreversible consequences.

But political and financial capital needs to be invested soon if the world is to follow the 450ppm path, it says, with emissions needing to peak around 2020.

Developed countries, which it defines as those in the OECD and/or EU, will have to slash energy-related emissions by 17% in the next 11 years and by 50% by 2030.

Other major emitters such as China, India and Brazil would have to keep the rise in their emissions to 14% above current levels by 2030.

Countries in earlier stages of development would be able to increase their greenhouse gas output.

Globally, clean energy technologies would expand rapidly.

In the decade after 2020, the IEA's prescription includes a threefold expansion of nuclear power, a fourfold growth in the renewables sector and a 14-fold expansion of clean coal technologies.

The cost of this transformation would be $10 trillion between 2010 and 2030, the agency says - but improving energy efficiency would save virtually the same amount.

Bangkok heat

In a foreword to the report, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate convention (UNFCCC), warned that all of this was contingent on tying up an ambitious global deal during December's UN climate conference in Copenhagen.

"These results should motivate us all to step up efforts to reach an agreement with the requisite ambition," he said.

"The cost of addressing climate change is manageable. The cost of not doing so is unaffordable."

Mr de Boer is currently in Bangkok, chairing a preparatory meeting of officials from governments inside the UN convention.

On Monday, China and Sudan - which chairs the G77/China bloc of primarily developing nations - accused rich countries of trying to "kill off" one of the fundamentals of the Kyoto Protocol - that emission targets should be legally binding in some way.

They accuse western countries such as the US and Australia of wanting to make targets more flexible, which they fear will allow "wriggle room".

The IEA's analysis forms part of its annual World Energy Outlook, and has been released early in order that it can be discussed in the Bangkok talks.

Selected headline figures, including the recession's projected impact on emissions, were made public last month.