[GPSCC-chat] Fwd: [Alt-Media] Delaying decisive investment in clean energy will cost us more financially and environmentally

[Gerry Gras]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Alt-Media] Delaying decisive investment in clean energy will 
cost us more financially and environmentally
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:37:26 -0800
From: Alt-Media <alt-media at cagreens.org>
Reply-To: alt-media-owner at cagreens.org
To: Alt-Media: News and views from an <alt-media at cagreens.org>


IEA Bombshell: We’re Headed Toward 11°F Global Warming

  Delaying action is a "false economy”

By Joe Romm

(Climate Progress, Nov 9) -- The International Energy Agency (IEA) has 
issued yet another clarion call for urgent action on climate. Their 
recently released 2011 World Energy Outlook (WEO) report should end once 
and for all any notion that delay is the rational course for the nation 
and the world:

	“On planned policies, rising fossil energy use will lead to 
irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change" the report 
notes. "We are on an even more dangerous track to an increase of 6°C 
[11°F in average global temperature] …. Delaying action is a false 
economy: For every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is 
avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need 
to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.”

	The UK Guardian‘s headline captures the urgency more succinctly: "World 
headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns -- If 
fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will ‘lose 
forever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change".

	We must start aggressively deploying clean energy now through myriad 
policies, including putting a price on carbon. That has been the 
conclusion of most authoritative studies, of course,  including the 
recent one by California’s independent state science and technology 
advisory panel.

	The IEA report deserves the label “bombshell,” though, because for most 
of the past two decades, the IEA was the source of bland, conservative, 
business-as-usual analysis. When I was the acting assistant secretary of 
energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy in 1997, no one at 
Department of Energy paid much attention to IEA reports. And that 
perspective continued through most of the past decade.

	But in just the last few years they have woken up to the risks posed to 
peak oil -- “We have to leave oil before oil leaves us”, the IEA's top 
economist warned in August 2009 -- and especially climate change. And in 
its 2009 WEO, the IEA warned that it will cost the world "an extra $500 
billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a 
major assault on global warming.”

	Now the IEA has done the calculation a different way. “Delaying action 
is a false economy", its 2011 WEO concludes. "For every dollar not 
invested in cleaner technology in the power sector before 2020, an 
additional $4.30 will need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the 
increased emissions.”

	In other words, those who counsel waiting for breakthrough technologies 
are urging us on a path that is unsustainable, irreversible, potentially 
catastrophic, and economically indefensible.

	The IEA is one of the few organizations in the world with a 
sophisticated enough global energy model to do credible projections of 
the cost of different emissions pathways and the costs of delaying 
efforts to achieve them. Their 2008 analysis of the 2°C warming pathway 
demonstrated that the total shift in investment needed to stabilize the 
amount of carbon in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million (ppm) is 
only about 1.1% of GDP per year.

	And it's worth noting that such investment would not be a “cost” or hit 
to the economy, because much of that investment goes towards saving 
expensive fuel, and developing new and sustainable industries the will 
actually serve to boost economic activity.

	But the IEA's new analysis shows that, because of soaring emissions, we 
are running out of time for the implementing such a 450 ppm scenario, 
and at risk of irreversibly “locking in” dangerous warming. “[W]e cannot 
continue to rely on insecure and environmentally unsustainable uses of 
energy,” said Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven. “Governments need 
to introduce stronger measures to drive investment in efficient and 
low-carbon technologies".

	“As each year passes without clear signals to drive investment in clean 
energy, the “lock-in” of high-carbon infrastructure is making it harder 
and more expensive to meet our energy security and climate goals,” said 
Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist. "Four-fifths of the total 
energy-related CO2 emissions permitted in the 450 ppm scenario are 
already locked-in by existing capital stock, including power stations, 
buildings and factories".

	"Without [decisive investment] by 2017, the energy-related 
infrastructure that will be in place as a result will generate all the 
CO2 emissions that are allowed under the 450 ppm scenario until the year 
2035", Birol said. Which means that all new infrastructure from then 
until 2035 would need to be zero-carbon emitting, unless old 
infrastructure is retired before the end of its economic lifetime to 
make headroom for new investment. That is theoretically -- but not 
politically -- possible.

	The IEA has created an intermediate scenario between the best-case 2°C 
warming and the more likely 6°C, "which assumes that recent government 
commitments are implemented in a cautious manner“. In this scenario, 
world demand for energy increases by one-third between 2010 and 2035, 
and energy-related CO2 emissions increase by 20%, creating a trajectory 
for a long-term rise in the average global temperature in excess of 3.5°C.

	Sorry, cautious governments, but warming greater than 3.5°C doesn’t 
avert multiple catastrophes -- it invites them.

	The key point is that in the 2020s, the world is going to be 
considerably more desperate than we are now. The evidence of 
human-caused climate change will be difficult for all but the most 
extreme deniers to ignore. The Arctic will very likely be virtually 
ice-free in September by then. The amplifying carbon-cycle feedbacks -- 
such as the release of even more carbon that was previously sequestered 
in the thawing Arctic permafrost -- will probably have started to kick in.

	We will be subjected to increasingly devastating extreme weather, in 
which the record-smashing super-storms of the last 18 months will 
increasingly be the normal weather -- and really extreme weather will be 
above and beyond that. "Dust-bowlification" will be setting in 
(including in the southern U.S.), and it will be pretty obvious that 
feeding 8 billion people (and then 9 and maybe 10 billion) will be the 
great task of humanity for the rest of the 21st century.

	In short, most policymakers will finally realize that we are on path to 
the self-destruction of modern civilization. And thus things that are 
viewed as politically impractical now will be taken very seriously in 
the 2020s. But that doesn’t mean the world will still get its act 
together in time. Indeed, because of the higher emissions and carbon 
feedbacks, the effort required to avert catastrophe will be considerably 
greater then.

	But we may yet find our environmental Winston Churchill, and that means 
we may yet adopt a World War II-style and -scale effort.  And in WWII, 
we converted a great deal of manufacturing infrastructure to war-time 
purposes before the end of its economic lifetime. That can’t be 
considered a likely scenario for the 2020s, but it’s far from impossible 
and may be our only hope.

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