IEA Report Outlines Challenges of Curbing C02 Emissions
The International Energy Agency’s latest World Energy Outlook offers a stark reminder of the challenges of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
The IEA’s “WEO-2008″ analyses policy options for tackling climate change after 2012, when a new global agreement – to be negotiated at the UN Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen next year – is due to take effect. The analysis assumes a hybrid policy approach, comprising a plausible combination of cap-and-trade systems, sectoral agreements and national measures.
On current trends, energy-related CO2 emissions are set to increase by 45% between 2006 and 2030, reaching 41 Gt, the IEA says.
Three-quarters of the increase arises in China, India and the Middle East, and 97% in non-OECD countries as a whole.
“Stabilising greenhouse gas concentration at 550 ppm of CO2-equivalent, which would limit the temperature increase to about 3°C, would require emissions to rise to no more than 33 Gt in 2030 and to fall in the longer term. The share of low-carbon energy – hydropower, nuclear, biomass, other renewables and fossil-fuel power plants equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS) – in the world primary energy mix would need to expand from 19% in 2006 to 26% in 2030.”
This would call for $4.1 trillion more investment in energy-related infrastructure and equipment than in the Reference Scenario – equal to 0.2% of annual world GDP.
Most of the increase is on the demand side, with $17 per person per year spent worldwide on more efficient cars, appliances and buildings, the IEA says. “On the other hand, improved energy efficiency would deliver fuel-cost savings of over $7 trillion. The scale of the challenge in limiting greenhouse gas concentration to 450 ppm of CO2-eq, which would involve a temperature rise of about 2°C, is much greater. World energy-related CO2 emissions would need to drop sharply from 2020 onwards, reaching less than 26 Gt in 2030.”
Our analysis shows that OECD countries alone cannot put the world onto a 450-ppm trajectory, even if they were to reduce their emissions to zero.
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