$45 Trillion Needed to Combat Global Warming
Pastor Dale Morgan
$45 Trillion Needed to Combat Global Warming*
By JOSEPH COLEMAN
The Associated Press
Friday, June 6, 2008; 7:06 AM
TOKYO -- The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming
decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind
power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to
an energy study released Friday.
The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a
"energy revolution" that would greatly reduce the world's dependence on
fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.
"Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a
formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and
technological transition on an unprecedented scale," IEA Executive
Director Nobuo Tanaka said.
A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to
be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world
temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels.
Scientists say temperature increases beyond that could trigger
devastating effects, such as widespread loss of species, famines and
droughts, and swamping of heavily populated coastal areas by rising oceans.
Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries
and Russia backed the 50 percent target in a meeting in Japan last month
and called for it to be officially endorsed at the G-8 summit in July.
The IEA report mapped out two main scenarios: one in which emissions are
reduced to 2005 levels by 2050, and a second that would bring them to
half of 2005 levels by mid-century.
The scenario for deeper cuts would require massive investment in energy
technology development and deployment, a wide-ranging campaign to
dramatically increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to
renewable sources of energy.
Assuming an average 3.3 percent global economic growth over the
2010-2050 period, governments and the private sector would have to make
additional investments of $45 trillion in energy, or 1.1 percent of the
world's gross domestic product, the report said.
That would be an investment more than three times the current size of
the entire U.S. economy.
The second scenario also calls for an accelerated ramping up of
development of so-called "carbon capture and storage" technology
allowing coal-powered power plants to catch emissions and inject them
underground.
The study said that an average of 35 coal-powered plants and 20
gas-powered power plants would have to be fitted with carbon capture and
storage equipment each year between 2010 and 2050.
In addition, the world would have to construct 32 new nuclear power
plants each year, and wind-power turbines would have to be increased by
17,000 units annually. Nations would have to achieve an eight-fold
reduction in carbon intensity _ the amount of carbon needed to produce a
unit of energy _ in the transport sector.
Such action would drastically reduce oil demand to 27 percent of 2005
demand. Failure to act would lead to a doubling of energy demand and a
130 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, IEA officials
said.
"This development is clearly not sustainable," said Dolf Gielen, an IEA
energy analyst and leader for the project.
Gielen said most of the $45 trillion forecast investment _ about $27
trillion _ would be borne by developing countries, which will be
responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Most of the money would be in the commercialization of energy
technologies developed by governments and the private sector.
"If industry is convinced there will be policy for serious, deep CO2
emission cuts, then these investments will be made by the private
sector," Gielen said.