Landmark UN analysis concludes global roll-out of clean energy would shave only a tiny fraction off economic growth
Damian Carrington The Guardian 13 Apr 14;
Catastrophic climate change can be averted without sacrificing living standards according to a UN report, which concludes that the transformation required to a world of clean energy is eminently affordable.
“It doesn’t cost the world to save the planet,” said economist Professor Ottmar Edenhofer, who led the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) team.
The cheapest and least risky route to dealing with global warming is to abandon all dirty fossil fuels in coming decades, the report found. Gas – including that from the global fracking boom – could be important during the transition, Edenhofer said, but only if it replaced coal burning.
The authoritative report, produced by 1,250 international experts and approved by 194 governments, dismisses fears that slashing carbon emissions would wreck the world economy. It is the final part of a trilogy that has already shown that climate change is “unequivocally” caused by humans and that, unchecked, it poses a grave threat to people and could lead to wars and mass migration.
Diverting hundred of billions of dollars from fossil fuels into renewable energy and cutting energy waste would shave just 0.06% off expected annual economic growth rates of 1.3%-3%, the IPCC report concluded.
“The report is clear: the more you wait, the more it will cost [and] the more difficult it will become,” said EU commissioner Connie Hedegaard. The US secretary of state, John Kerry, said: “This report is a wake-up call about global economic opportunity we can seize today as we lead on climate change.”
The UK’s energy and climate secretary, Ed Davey, said: “The [report shows] the tools we need to tackle climate change are available, but international efforts need to significantly increase.”
The IPCC economic analysis did not include the benefits of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which could outweigh the costs. The benefits include reducing air pollution, which plagues China and recently hit the UK, and improved energy security, which is currently at risk in eastern Europe due to the actions of Russia – a large producer of gas – in Ukraine.
The new IPCC report warns that carbon emissions have soared in the last decade and are now growing at almost double the previous rate. But its comprehensive analysis found rapid action can still limit global warming to 2C, the internationally agreed safe limit, if low-carbon energy triples or quadruples by 2050.
“It is actually affordable to do it and people are not going to have to sacrifice their aspirations about improved standards of living,” said Professor Jim Skea, an energy expert at Imperial College London and co-chair of the IPCC report team. “It is not a hair shirt change of lifestyle at all that is being envisaged and there is space for poorer countries to develop too,” Skea told the Guardian.
Nonetheless, to avoid the worst impacts of climate change at the lowest cost, the report envisages an energy revolution ending centuries of dominance by fossil fuels – which will require significant political and commercial change. On Thursday, Archbishop Desmond Tutu called for an anti-apartheid style campaign against fossil fuel companies, which he blames for the “injustice” of climate change.
Friends of the Earth’s executive director, Andy Atkins, said: “Rich nations must take the lead by rapidly weaning themselves off coal, gas and oil and funding low-carbon growth in poorer countries.”
Along with measures that cut energy waste, renewable energy – such as wind, hydropower and solar – is viewed most favourably by the report as a result of its falling costs and large-scale deployment in recent years.
The report includes nuclear power as a mature low-carbon option, but cautions that it has declined globally since 1993 and faces safety, financial and waste-management concerns. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) – trapping the CO2 from coal or gas burning and then burying it – is also included, but the report notes it is an untested technology on a large scale and may be expensive.
Biofuels, used in cars or power stations, could play a “critical role” in cutting emissions, the IPCC found, but it said the negative effects of some biofuels on food prices and wildlife remained unresolved.
The report found that current emission-cutting pledges by the world’s nations make it more likely than not that the 2C limit will be broken and it warns that delaying action any further will increase the costs.
Delay could also force extreme measures to be taken including sucking CO2 out of the air.
This might be done by generating energy by burning plants and trees, which had absorbed carbon from the atmosphere, and then using CCS to bury the emissions. But the IPCC warned such warned such carbon removal technologies may never be developed and could bring new risks.
“This is a very responsible report,” said Professor Andrew Watson, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Exeter who was not part of the IPCC team. He said there were economic and social risks in transforming the energy system to cut carbon. “However, there are even bigger risks if we do nothing and rely exclusively on being able to ride out climate change and adapt to it.”
Environmental campaign groups, which have previously criticised the IPCC for being too conservative, welcomed the new report. WWF’s Samantha Smith said: “The IPCC report makes clear that acting on emissions now is affordable, but delaying further increases the costs. It is a super strong signal to [fossil fuel] investors: they can no longer say they did not know the risks.”
Kaisa Kosonen, at Greenpeace International, said: “Renewable energy is unstoppable. It’s becoming bigger, better and cheaper every day. Dirty energy industries are sure to put up a fight but it’s only a question of time before public pressure and economics dictate that they either change or go out of business.”
World must end 'dirty' fuel use - UN
Matt McGrath BBC News 13 Apr 14;
A long-awaited UN report on how to curb climate change says the world must rapidly move away from carbon-intensive fuels.
There must be a "massive shift" to renewable energy, says the study released in Berlin.
It has been finalised after a week of negotiations between scientists and government officials.
Natural gas is seen as a key bridge to move energy production away from oil and coal.
But there have been battles between participants over who will pay for this energy transition.
The report is the work of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was set up to provide a clear scientific view on climate change and its impacts.
The Summary for Policymakers on mitigation paints a picture of a world with carbon emissions rising rapidly.
"The high speed mitigation train needs to leave the station very soon, and all of global society will have to get on board," the IPCC's chair Rajendra Pachauri told journalists in Berlin at the launch of the report.
Dr Youba Sokono, a co-chair of the IPCC's working group 3, which drew up the report, said science has spoken.
He added that policy makers were "the navigators, they have to make decisions, scientists are the map makers".
The UK's Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey said global warming needed to be tackled using "all technologies". He told BBC News: "We can do this, we have to because it's so challenging and threatening to our economies and societies, our health, our food security. The report today shows we can do it if we have the political will."
He added that the UK government was a leader on the use of renewable energy sources, saying: "We've, for example, doubled the amount of renewable electricity in the last few years. We're likely to do better than our targets in increasing renewable electricity. But we've got to do more."
About half of all the carbon that humans have pumped into the atmosphere since 1750 has been emitted in the last 40 years.
Rates have been rising fast since 2000, despite the global economic crash.
Continue reading the main story
Analysis
Adam Fleming BBC News Political Correspondent
The Energy Secretary Ed Davey reckons the government doesn't get the credit it deserves for delivering an ambitious green agenda: Investing in renewables, co-operating internationally to cut carbon and building lots of wind farms.
The problem is that there are a few things that a sizeable chunk of Tory backbenchers simply cannot stomach, namely: Subsidies, Europe and - err - building lots of wind farms.
Maybe that's why the Chancellor has come up with a formula which he hopes will satisfy both sides - that Britain can go green but it has to be done as cheaply as possible.
And what about David Cameron? The PM is famously alleged to have said he wanted to "cut the green crap" but that has always been strenuously denied by Downing Street, and he made a passionate plea to tackle climate change during a session of Prime Minister's Questions earlier this year.
The report points to an increased use of coal in the decade from the turn of the millennium , "reversing the longstanding trend of decarbonisation of the world's energy supply".
Driven by a global increase in population and economic activity, global surface temperature increases will be between 3.7C and 4.8C in 2100 if no new action is taken.
This is way above the 2 degree level, regarded as the point beyond which dangerous impacts of climate change will be felt.
However, the scientists involved in the report say this situation can be turned around.
"It needs a big change in the energy sector, that is undoubtedly true," said Prof Jim Skea, vice-chair of working group 3.
"One of the biggest areas that's important is getting the carbon out of electricity, so renewable energy, nuclear, fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage, that's all part of the menu if we are going to make the transition to stay under the 2 degree target."
It is not a simple task. To be sure of staying below 2 degrees, the amount of carbon in the air needs to be around 450 parts per million by 2100. To get there, emissions in 2050 need to be 40-70% lower than they were in 2010.
The IPCC says that renewables are a critical part of that pathway.
Since the last report in 2007, the scientists say that renewable energy has come on in leaps and bounds.
In 2012, renewables accounted for just over half of the new electricity generation added around the world.
The scientists stress that renewables are becoming economically competitive with fossil fuels and also offer a range of other benefits, including clean air and energy security.
"It certainly is the end for carbon intensive fuels that's for sure," said Jennifer Morgan from the World Resources Institute, who was a review editor on one of the chapters of the IPCC report.
"There needs to be a massive shift away from fossil fuels and investment needs to shift to going 100% clean as fast as possible."
Prof Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair of working group 3, said: "Mitigation does not mean the world has to sacrifice economic growth."
He explained that the report added "modest hope", but added: "Climate policy is not a free lunch."
One of the surprising endorsements in the report is natural gas.
"Emissions from energy supply can be reduced significantly by replacing current world average coal-fired power plants with modern, highly efficient natural gas combined-cycle power plants," says the summary.
The report describes natural gas as a "bridge" technology with deployment increasing before peaking and falling below current levels by 2050.
However many of the scenarios examined by the panel would still involve an "overshoot" of the target range.
To cope with this the world may need to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Combining carbon capture and storage with bioenergy is seen as one potential solution, but the report is lukewarm on these ideas, saying the "methods are uncertain" and are "associated with risks".
Timing is everything, say the scientists.
"Delaying mitigation efforts beyond those in place today through 2030 is estimated to substantially increase the difficulty of the transition to low longer-term emissions," says the summary.
"If we delay we are faced with hard choices," said Prof Skea.
"Do we give up on the 2 degrees target or do we employ these techniques that suck CO2 out of the atmosphere - if we proceed promptly and we get a deal in Paris next year, then we need to rely less on these ideas."
The report points out that there needs to be huge shifts in investment if the worst impacts of rising temperatures are to be avoided. Investment in renewables and other low carbon sources needs to at least treble by the middle of the century, while money flowing into fossil fuels has to diminish.
But differences have emerged over who should make the cuts in emissions and who should pay for the switch to low carbon energy sources. Developed and developing countries have clashed here in Berlin, echoing divisions found in the UN negotiations.
"It is true that some of the dynamics that we see in the UNFCCC negotiations were visible here as well," said Kaisa Kosenen from Greenpeace.
"It is an indication that the key question of equity - who should do what and who should pay for the damages already caused."
Other participants believed that this new report could actually help push the UN process forward.
"I hope that this information from the IPCC can kind of do a bit of a tectonic shift into a co-operating mode rather than a finger pointing mode between countries," said Jennifer Morgan.
"There's too much at stake."
IPCC report: world must urgently switch to clean sources of energy
UN panel's third report explains how global dependence on fossil fuels must end in order to avoid catastrophic climate change
Damian Carrington The Guardian 12 Apr 14;
Clean energy will have to at least treble in output and dominate world energy supplies by 2050 in order to avoid catastrophic climate change, a UN report is set to conclude on Sunday.
The report produced by hundreds of experts and backed by almost 200 world governments, will detail the dramatic transformation required of the entire globe's power system, including ending centuries of coal, oil and gas supremacy.
Currently fossil fuels provide more than 80% of all energy but the urgent need to cut planet-warming carbon emissions means this must fall to as little as a third of present levels in coming decades, according to a leaked draft of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report seen by the Guardian.
There is heavy emphasis on renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, and cutting energy waste, which together need hundreds of billions of dollars of investment a year.
But despite the scale of the challenge, the draft report is upbeat: "Since [2007], many renewable energy technologies have substantially advanced in terms of performance and cost and a growing number have achieved technical and economic maturity, making renewable energy a fast growing category in energy supply," the report says.
It also highlights that the benefits of clean energy, particularly in reducing deadly air pollution and providing secure energy supplies, "outweigh the adverse side effects". The IPCC report is the last part of a trilogy compiled by thousands of the world's most eminent scientists which gives the most definitive account of climate change to date.
The first report, released in September, showed climate change was "unequivocally" caused by human activity and prompted Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, to say: "The heat is on. Now we must act."
The second, published in March, warned that the impact of global warming, from extreme weather to reduced food production, posed a grave threat to humanity and could lead to wars and mass migration. The International Energy Agency said the IPCC's work showed "the urgent need of enabling a global transition to clean energy systems".
The report will address how to avert the worst dangers by cutting carbon emissions, which have been rising despite the global recession of 2007-08.
Nuclear power is cited among the low-carbon energy sources needed, but the draft report warns it "has been declining since 1993" and faces concerns about "safety, nuclear weapon proliferation risks, waste management security as well as financial and regulatory risks".
Another way to produce low-carbon energy is to burn fossil fuels but capture and bury the carbon emissions.
The IPCC experts note that, unlike renewable energy, this technology "has not yet been applied at a large, commercial scale".
The draft report concludes that increasing carbon emissions are due to rising coal use, along with increasing demand for energy from the world's growing population. But it notes that policies implemented to cut carbon emissions will also cut the value of fossil fuel reserves, particularly for coal. It also says increased use of gas could cut emissions in the "short term", if it replaces coal.
China's vast coal burning represents a huge challenge but a new analysis from Greenpeace, published on Friday, suggests it may have reached a turning point. "The range of coal caps and anti-smog measures put in place by the Chinese authorities could see the country cut its carbon emissions by more than twice the UK's annual footprint by 2020, making it possible for global carbon levels to peak before climate change spirals out of control," said Li Shuo, Greenpeace East Asia's climate and energy campaigner.
On Thursday, Nobel peace prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu called in the Guardian for an anti-apartheid-style campaign against fossil fuel companies. "It is clear that [the companies] are not simply going to give up; they stand to make too much money," he wrote.
Over half a trillion dollars a year are spent subsidising fossil fuels – six times more than spent supporting renewable energy – and US president Barack Obama and other leaders have pledged to phase these out. The draft IPCC report states this could be done without harming the poor: "Many countries have reformed their tax and budget systems to reduce fuel subsidies, that actually accrue to the relatively wealthy, and used other mechanisms that are more targeted to the poor."
The draft report runs counter to some of the UK's key energy policies. It states that decarbonising electricity is key to cost-effective cuts in emissions, but the coalition government voted down a plan to do this by 2030. The report also warns that building high-carbon energy infrastructure developments will lock societies into high emissions and may be "difficult or very costly to change", but UK ministers are strongly pushing shale gas exploration. The UK's carbon plan includes significant burning of biofuels and biomass (usually wood), which is supposed to be carbon neutral. But the IPCC report says scientific debate about whether biofuels cut emissions "remains unresolved" and that without policy safeguards "large scale bioenergy deployment could increase emissions".
Friends of the Earth's executive director, Andy Atkins, said: "We can only avoid catastrophic climate change if we reduce our dependency on fossil fuels – we're already on track for four degrees warming, which will be impossible for human society to adapt to. We have the technology to prevent dangerous climate change. What we lack is the political will of our leaders to strongly champion renewable power and energy efficiency."
Li said: "We stand at a fork in road. One way leads to more dependence on dwindling fossil fuels that are wrecking our climate and damaging our health; the other to a world powered by a booming clean energy sector that is already driving growth and creating jobs. The sooner we act, the cheaper it will be."
Shift to green energy will be tiny brake on growth: U.N.
Alister Doyle PlanetArk 14 Apr 14;
Many governments had complained that an earlier draft was not clear in its estimate of the costs of low-carbon energy, which include solar or wind, nuclear and fossil fuels whose greenhouse gas emissions are captured and buried underground.
The new draft, which is being edited by government officials and scientists in Berlin before publication on Sunday, indicates that world economic losses would be small compared to projected costs of heatwaves, floods, storms and rising sea levels.
The study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a main guide for governments working on a U.N. pact due to be agreed in Paris at the end of 2015 to slow global warming, which the IPCC says is extremely likely to be man-made.
The new text, obtained by Reuters, says that tough action to cut rising greenhouse gas emissions would slow rising world consumption of goods and services by 0.06 percentage point per year in this century, in a range of 0.04 to 0.14.
Economists say the changes in consumption measured by the IPCC are almost identical to changes in the more common yardstick of gross domestic product (GDP). Consumption excludes investments included in GDP.
The earlier draft said consumption losses could be up to 12 percent by 2100 but omitted to clarify that the number is the cumulative result of a small brake every year over a century, rather than a hint of economic slump in 2100.
The new draft also adds context that losses are tiny compared to soaring wealth - consumption is set to rise by anywhere from 300 to 900 percent this century, it says.
Several nations said the losses of 12 percent by 2100 cited in the earlier draft sounded alarming and wanted further clarification.
Britain had said the number "could easily be taken out of context by those opposed to climate action", referring to those who are not convinced that climate change is a man-made problem requiring an urgent fix.
The IPCC draft says trillion-dollar shifts in investments are needed to make low-carbon energies the dominant source of energy by 2050, up from 17 percent now, in a shift from conventional fossil fuels.
CLIMATE CASINO
The WWF conservation group set up a mock casino outside the Berlin hotel where the IPCC is meeting, urging governments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels and to shift to renewables.
"We can't continue to gamble with the future of the world we depend on," Stefan Singer of the WWF said.
Environmental group Greenpeace said China's rush to develop dirty coal seemed to be coming to an end in a shift that would avert annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of Australia and Poland combined by 2020.
"Over half of world carbon dioxide emission growth in the past decade has been from China's coal," said Li Shuo of Greenpeace. "China's concern about air pollution may have broken that trend."
Greenpeace projected that curbs adopted by 12 provinces would reduce coal burn by about 350 million metric tons (385. 81 million tons) by 2017 and 655 million tons by 2020, below projected levels.
The IPCC draft does not attempt a formal cost-benefit analysis of action to keep temperatures to any given level.
(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
