The burning issue of energy cannot wait for
economic good times
Carbon emissions are rising by record amounts, stoked by political inaction and fossil fuel subsidies.
We are almost out of time to douse the climate change crisis
The house is ablaze and we
are throwing bucket after
bucket at it - buckets of petrol.
Worse, if that is possible, the
world's politicians are not
stepping in to stop us stoking
the flames: instead they are
helping us pay for the petrol.
That
simple,
devastating
analogy captures entirely the
current global action on climate
change. Despite warnings from
scientists that have been clear
for years, the globe is not
curbing its carbon emissions:
Mexico has started cutting its subsidies for petrol, but around the world fossil fuels they are rising by record
amounts. We are not even
still received over $400bn in 2010. Photograph: Omar Torres/AFP/Getty Images
getting more efficient in our
use of fossil fuels to power our economies, we are now getting worse. And the rising subsidies
poured into fossil fuels swamp those for clean energy by six to one.
The previous charge made against the world's leaders - you are not moving forward fast enough failed to spark action. Will the new message - you are now reversing at speed towards a hellish future
- change that? The UN negotiations on a global climate change agreement, reconvening in Durban
shortly, will be the first test of whether this new reality has sunk in.
But, with tackling global warming tumbling down the agenda with politicians transfixed by economic
crisis, the omens are gloomy. The new warning this Wednesday from the International Energy
Agency, a deeply conservative organisation, could not be more stark. Unless we shift the global
1
energy supertanker off its current, dirty course by 2017, we will have locked in enough greenhouse
gas pollution to condemn the world to a temperature rise above the 2C deemed "safe" by
governments. Yet the best aspirations for Durban look utterly inadequate. UK's climate change
minister Greg Barker recently said having a global climate deal ready to "click in" by 2020 was
realistic.
The IEA predict a temperature rise of 3.5C if current energy policies around the world are delivered
but no more. That means a future world of mass migration, severe water shortages and England
having the summer climate of Morocco today. If those policies fail to materialise, the IEA predicts 6C.
That's Armageddon: large parts of the planet uninhabitable and the risk of runaway warming
threatening the rest.
So what to do? The IEA says the wide difference between these scenarios and one that limits
warming to 2C "underlines the critical role of governments to define the objectives and implement the
policies necessary to shape our energy future." The current silence on tackling the energy crisis and
climate change from Prime Minister David Cameron and the antipathy from Chancellor George
Osborne is simply shameful. The investment needed for a clean energy future is already huge and is
made yet more expensive by political uncertainty.
With the economies of developed nations stagnant, some are pleading poverty as an excuse for
inaction. But, says the IEA, "delaying action is a false economy". It states that avoiding $1 of energy
investment before 2020 will require $4.30 to compensate after that date.
If money needs to be saved, start with the $409bn gifted to the fossil fuel industry in 2010 in
subsidies. The G20 backed this idea in 2009 but has yet to deliver. The subsidies do not enable the
impoverished to access energy: just 8% of the subsidies reach the world's poorest 20% of people.
Renewable energy, the only truly sustainable source of power, received just $66bn of support last
year, and even the IEA thinks this will rise to no more than $180bn by 2035.
There's plenty more that ought to spur action in the IEA report. It predicts the oil cartel Opec will get
more powerful and Russia will be confirmed as the "cornerstone" of the world's energy economy, with
all that implies for energy security in importing countries. The IEA also foresees a "golden age of
gas", replete with environmental challenges and with 20% coming from the fracking of shale.
The UK's first planned carbon capture and storage demonstration plant may have collapsed in farce,
but making CCS technology work by the 2020s is critical, says the IEA. "If not," says the report, "an
extraordinary burden would rest on other low-carbon technologies." New nuclear power plants must
be built, the IEA says, especially in emerging economies.
The IEA acknowledges some "steps in the right direction", but the central message is a deafening
alarm.
If you thought that tackling the red-hot issue of cleaning up energy now was tantamount to burning
money, you ain't seen nothing yet. Without urgent and transformative action, today's conflagrations
will seem like stray sparks compared to the wildfires to come.
2