Renewables Key for Climate, World Energy Supply – IPCC

The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)

21 May 2011

Abu Dhabi — Renewable energy could meet nearly 80 per cent of the world’s energy needs by mid-century and play a crucial role in fighting global warming, the UN’s climate scientists said last week in a major report. The 194-nation Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) said that renewable sources had grown rapidly, were widely competitive with fossil energies and, technically, had almost limitless potential.

But cleaner energy still faces formidable barriers, and governments must boost its development and peel back fossil-fuel subsidies for that potential to be realised, the panel cautioned.”This report has a huge implication for the manner in which energy is going to be developed and used across the globe in the years ahead,” IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said at a press conference.

The thousand-page analysis, unveiled at a May 5-13 meeting of the IPCC, evaluates 164 development scenarios and is designed to guide decision-makers in government and business.”Renewable energy sources can contribute substantially to human wellbeing by sustainably supplying energy and stabilising the climate,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, a co-chair of the report.

The price tag will be steep, though. Different projections put it at $1.4 to $5.1 trillion for the coming decade, and another $1.5 to $7.2 trillion dollars for 2021-2030. But if the benefits of curbing global warming are factored in, Pachauri said, this may be a bargain. “These costs will still be less than one per cent of the global GDP going up to 2050. This is an extremely significant figure — it shows that the cost … is within reach,” he said.

A majority of the scenarios reviewed show a “substantial increase” — ranging from three-to-20 fold — “in the deployment of renewable energy by 2030, 2050 and beyond.” Clean energy’s share of future supply varied hugely across different forecasts, with the most conservative projecting a 15-per cent share by mid-century and the most ambitious predicting it will cover three-quarters of all energy needs.

The first major report by the Nobel-winning panel since 2007 concluded that there is virtually unlimited technical potential for renewables, especially from solar energy.

“The opportunities are tremendous. We know that the technical potential for renewables is far in excess of demand,” said Mr Adnan Amin, director general of the International Renewable Energy Agency. Clean sources of power must play a critical role if the UN-backed goal of preventing average global temperatures from rising more than 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is to be met, the IPCC said.

UN climate talks have remained largely stalemated since the near collapse of the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen, even as scientists warn that climate change is accelerating. The report “underscores the irreplaceable potential of renewable energies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Ms Christiana Figueres, the top UN official overseeing climate talks.

AllAfrica – All the Time