The world is not on track to reach its goal of limiting global temperature increase to 2°C, warned the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Monday.
Highlighting the need for intensive action in the energy sector before 2020, the IEA noted that the energy sector accounts for about two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels.
“Climate change has quite frankly slipped to the back burner of policy priorities,” Marie van der Hoeven, IEA Executive Director said in a press release that accompanied the London launch of an IEA report, Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map. “But the problem is not going away – quite the opposite.”
“This report shows that the path we are currently on is more likely to result in a temperature increase of between 3.6 °C and 5.3 °C but also finds that much more can be done to tackle energy-sector emissions without jeopardising economic growth, an important concern for many governments,” van der Hoeven said.
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Government and financial institutions around the world must pledge to invest at least US$40 billion (€30.6 billion) in renewable energy over the next 12 months as a way of fighting climate change, according to a campaign launched this week by the environmental NGO the WWF.
“We are running out of time,” says Jim Leape, director general of WWF International, launching the campaign Seize Your Power. “We know that if we continue to rely on fossil fuels we will face a future of worsening air pollution and an increasingly inhospitable climate. It is now our collective responsibility to commit to the future we want. We call on political and financial decision-makers to seize their power to make the switch to clean and sustainable renewable energy and end the inertia of coal, oil and gas.”
Anyone and everyone can sign the pledge on the WWF’s website to encourage governments and financial institutions to put their money where their mouth is, and promise greater funds for wind, solar and water power. The campaign will run in 20 countries around the world and be targeted at public finance, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.
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An image from the Wake-up Call app
The global temperature is rising. Freak weather events are multiplying. Climate change is happening.
And yet governments are giving $6 to polluting fossil fuels for every $1 dollar that goes to clean renewables.
World leaders must move now to renewable, clean energy sources like wind energy. And with the new Global Wind Day app you can tell them to do it and why.
On 17 and 18 June, leaders of the governments of the world’s eight wealthiest countries are meeting in the UK. The leaders of these countries, such as Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel and François Hollande, are ultimately responsible for the continuing and growing support for dirty fossil fuels given by their governments. Such subsidies are up nearly 30% from 2010 to $523bn in 2011 (IEA, 2012) compared to $88bn for renewables.
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The reason fossil fuel firms are not trying to reduce their carbon emissions could be due to uncertainty on climate and energy policy, suggests the Economist in a recent editorial.
The paper cites cuts in renewable energy support schemes as one of the elements influencing investors. “Companies are betting that government climate policies will fail.”
This is exactly what EWEA has been warning for many months:
“The financial and economic crisis has provoked a wave of uncertainty across the European Union since 2010, with national governments making damaging retroactive changes to policies and regulations for wind energy.”
The Economist added that in mid-April the European Parliament voted against attempts to shore up Europe’s emissions trading system, the world’s largest carbon market, against collapse.
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Thomas Becker, EWEA CEO.
Commenting on the call from BusinessEurope Director General Markus J Beyrer on EU energy policy, European Wind Energy Association CEO Thomas Becker had this to say;
It sounds a little old fashioned when BusinessEurope claims that fighting climate change is not compatible with cost-competitiveness and security of supply. What have they been doing for the last 15 years? What planet were they on?
The main problem of the energy situation today in Europe is the massive subsidies – still in 2013 – going to fossil fuels and nuclear.
If that was corrected and with a properly functioning electricity market there would be no discussion of what choice policy makers would make for the energy mix.
But even without such a correction, wind energy is already cheaper than nuclear, and in an increasing number of locations already cost competitive with new gas and coal.
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