Climate change: UN panel on climate change reveals range of options to ensure greenhouse gases peak by 2015:
Pressure on the world's political leaders to engage seriously with global warming has intensified following the publication yesterday of a report showing that there is "substantial economic potential" to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The UN's leading scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the range of options it has advanced to ensure that emissions peak by 2015 and start to decline thereafter would cost less than 3 per cent of global GDP by 2030, or just 0.12 per cent a year.
IPCC chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri told a press conference in Bangkok that he expected the panel's third working group report would be a "major item" at the G8 summit next month and that it would "profoundly influence" this year's UN climate change summit in Bali next December.
There was now an enhanced awareness of the issue among the public, as well as a growing recognition of the relatively low cost of mitigation measures, he said.
"I also think world leaders are getting quite concerned, fuelled essentially by the material presented in our reports," he added.
He predicted that the panel's fourth assessment of climate change - yesterday's report was the third to be published this year - would have a "direct impact" on the public and on policymakers worldwide in terms of the decisions they made on issues such as energy use.
Irrespective of climate change, more than $20 trillion (€14.7 trillion) is expected to be invested in upgrading global energy plants between now and 2030.
The additional cost for tweaking these investments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be "negligible", 5 to 10 per cent at most.
The working group's report concluded that the world community could reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases over the next several decades by exploiting cost-effective policies and current and emerging technologies.
Based on the most up-to-date, peer-reviewed literature on emissions, modelling, economics, policies and technologies, the report shows how governments, industry and individuals could reduce the "carbon intensity" of the global economy despite rising incomes and population.
Dr Pachauri emphasised the need to put a realistic price on carbon because this would influence the development of alternatives to fossil fuels.
"It is naive to believe that such technologies will be developed unless there is a package of incentives," he said.
Other options would include promoting the use of natural gas over more carbon-intensive fossil fuels, large hydroelectric and geothermal energy schemes, and "carbon capture and storage" technology, which would involve pumping carbon dioxide (CO2) into disused oil wells, for example.
According to the IPCC, nuclear energy could increase its share of global electricity generation by 2 per cent to 18 per cent by 2030, "but safety, weapons proliferation and [ radioactive] waste remain as constraints" to its development, which the authors say they are not endorsing.
The report suggests that 30 per cent of the projected CO2 emissions from residential and commercial buildings could be avoided through greater use of passive solar design and better insulation as well as high-efficiency lighting, appliances and heating/cooling systems.
Referring to transport, where emissions are growing fastest, it concedes that even rising fuel costs are not expected to lead to significant reductions in emissions. Nonetheless, it proposes a series of measures to make cars more energy-efficient and promote the use of public transport.
In the industrial sector, the report suggests that the greatest potential for reducing emissions is in the energy-intensive steel, cement, pulp and paper industries as well as in aluminium smelting, magnesium and semiconductor processing and the chemical and food industries.
Options for reducing agricultural emissions - a section of the report of which Teagasc's Frank O'Meara was one of the lead authors - include improved management of crop and grazing lands, such as using fewer nutrients, as well as restoring organic soils and degraded lands.
Arresting high levels of deforestation and promoting more afforestation is also identified as a priority. In the longer term, it says, the best way to maintain the value of forests as carbon "sinks" is through sustainable management, which also has many social and environmental benefits.
Dr Bert Metz, co-chairman of the mitigation working group, cautioned that controlling climate change "will take 50 to 100 years because gases that go up into the atmosphere stay there. For stabilisation, we need an early reduction in emissions over the next 25 years".
Prof Ogunlade Davidson, the group's other co-chairman, pointed out that a very strong element of its report was the relationship between sustainable development and climate change mitigation. "It is extremely important that we alter the way we develop our societies", he said.
Prof Davidson, who is from Ghana, said developing countries should not feel threatened by the IPCC. "Our report clearly identifies positive solutions . . . we are not saying to them to stop developing, but to use measures to avoid the amount of gases they put in the atmosphere".
Dr Pachauri hoped the analysis and assessment would have "a major impact at every level of society . . . It's not for me to say if a country would be prepared to drop 3 per cent of GDP, but they cannot ignore what it would cost if they took no action".
UN climate panel: main findings
THE REPORT: The survey by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) looks at the costs of slowing climate change and the tools available for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The report is the third of four this year in a review that will guide government policymakers. The IPCC draws on the work of 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries.
EMISSIONS: "Global greenhouse gas emissions have grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of 70 per cent between 1970 and 2004." Emissions are set to increase by 25 to 90 per cent between 2000 and 2030.
Developed countries, a fifth of the world population, produced 46 per cent of emissions in 2000. Up to 75 per cent of projected growth in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from energy use will come from developing nations.
THE COSTS: Costs of cutting greenhouse gases range from less than 3 per cent of world GDP in 2030, with the stiffest curbs, to a small 0.2 per cent boost to growth with an easier goal.The strictest goal, limiting concentrations of greenhouse gases to 445 parts per million (ppm) of the atmosphere, would cut annual GDP growth rates by less than 0.12 per cent.
Greenhouse gas concentrations are now at 430 ppm.
Benefits to health from less air pollution, caused by a shift from fossil fuels, "may offset a substantial fraction of mitigation costs".
BEYOND 2030:"Mitigation efforts over the next two to three decades will have a large impact on opportunities to achieve lower stabilisation levels." In 2050 the economic impact of stabilising greenhouse gases at 710 and 445 ppm would range from a 1 per cent gain in global GDP to a 5.5 decrease.
The strictest goal would require a 50 to 85 per cent cut in emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 compared to 2000.