GLAND, Switzerland, June 6, 2007.
The world can avoid the worst impacts from climate change if it invests in clean energy within five years, according to the environmental group WWF.
A task force reviewed 25 different low-carbon energy technologies for its ‘Climate Solutions’ report, including solar and wind, but also demand-side options such as efficient buildings and other low-carbon technologies such as carbon capture and storage and nuclear. The only constraint was that the technologies had to be ‘proven’ and commercially available now.
Each of the sources was sorted and ranked on its environmental impacts, social acceptability and economic costs, which grouped the technologies into those with clear positive benefits beyond the ability to reduce carbon intensity, those with some negative impacts but which (on balance) remain positive, and those whose negative impacts outweigh the positive.
The report identifies six solutions and three imperatives as key to achieving the goal of meeting global energy demand without damaging the global climate, with the priority being energy efficiency, especially in developed countries which have a very inefficient capital stock. By 2025, the model shows that “energy efficiencies will make it possible to meet increasing demand for energy services within a stable net demand for primary energy production, reducing projected demand by 39% annually, and avoiding emissions of 9.4Gt carbon per year, by 2050.”
“The rapid and parallel pursuit of the full range of technologies, such as wind, hydro, solar PV and thermal, and bio-energy is crucial, but within a set of environmental and social constraints to ensure their sustainability,” it explains. “By 2050, these technologies could meet 70% of the remaining demand after efficiencies have been applied, avoiding a further 10.2Gt carbon emissions annually.”
“Deep cuts in fossil-fuel use cannot be achieved without large volumes of energy from intermittent sources, like wind and solar, being stored and transformed into transportable fuels and into fuels to meet the thermal needs of industry,” it continues. “New fuels, such as hydrogen, that meet these requirements will require major new infrastructure for their production and distribution.”
“The world has never been more aware of climate change, or the urgent need to slow its advance,” explains James Leape of WWF International. “The question for leaders and governments everywhere is how to rein in dangerously high levels of carbon dioxide emissions without stunting development and reducing living standards.”
“The Climate Solutions report shows not only that this can be done, it shows how we can do it,” he adds. “We have a small window of time in which we can plant the seeds of change, and that is the next five years. We cannot afford to waste them.”
Climate Solutions is the report of WWF’s Energy Taskforce which was set up in December 2005 with 100 scientists contributing their knowledge. Their model shows, “with a high degree of probability (greater than 90%) that known energy sources and proven technologies could be harnessed between now and 2050 to meet a projected doubling in global demand for energy while at the same time achieving the necessary significant drop (about 60-80%) in carbon dioxide emissions to prevent dangerous climate change.”
A rapid scaling-up of wind, hydro, bioenergy, geothermal, solar PV, wave and tidal, and solar thermal is needed and, in the next 50 years, “expansion of sustainable wind, hydro and bioenergy will be particularly important.” Bioenergy for heat and transport “holds vast potential but could go terribly wrong if implemented unsustainably (by clearing biodiverse habitats to plant energy crops) and “large hydro dams need also to be deployed with restraint.”
“The remedies for climate change have been discussed at length without sufficient decisive action,” it concludes. “Meanwhile, carbon-intensive technologies are rapidly using up the available carbon budget, reducing options and placing the future in jeopardy.”
“Action is needed by governments of the world to agree targets, to collaborate on effective strategies, and to influence and coordinate the investment of many trillions of dollars (which in any event will be invested in energy in the coming decades), so that future needs are met safely and sustainably,” it adds.
