Guardian: “Mitigation of Climate Change, by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a panel of 200 scientists, will make it clear that by far the most realistic option for the future is to triple or even quadruple the use of renewable power plants.” “Only through such decisive action will carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere be kept below the critical level of 480 parts per million (ppm), before the middle of the century. If levels go beyond this figure, the chances of curtailing global mayhem are poor, they will say.
The report – the third in a series by the IPCC designed to highlight the climate crisis now facing the planet – is intended as an urgent wake-up call to nations to commit around 1-2% of GDP in order to replace power plants that burn fossil fuels, the major cause of global warming, with renewable sources.
Its conclusions represent a huge challenge for Cameron and the Conservative party – which is now laying plans to block the construction of new onshore windfarms in Britain, the country’s only realistic, reasonably priced renewable energy option other than solar power, which has limited potential in the UK.
….Onshore wind power costs around £90 per megawatt hour to generate, but for offshore windfarms this rises to £150. Other renewable energy sources are either of limited use in Britain or are not yet fully developed, such as tidal power. Nuclear energy is one alternative, but is controversial, and a major construction programme would take decades to approve and construct.”
IPCC press release: “Many pathways to substantial emissions reductions are available” but emissions still rise.Emissions grew more quickly between 2000 and 2010 than in each of the three previous decades.
….According to the Working Group III contribution to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, it would be possible, using a wide array of technological measures and changes in behaviour, to limit the increase in global mean temperature to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. However, only major institutional and technological change will give a better than even chance that global warming will not exceed this threshold.
….Working Group III is led by three Co-Chairs: Ottmar Edenhofer from Germany, Ramón Pichs-Madruga from Cuba, and Youba Sokona from Mali.
“Climate policies in line with the two degrees Celsius goal need to aim for substantial emission reductions,” Edenhofer said. “There is a clear message from science: To avoid dangerous interference with the climate system, we need to move away from business as usual.”
Scenarios show that to have a likely chance of limiting the increase in global mean temperature to two degrees Celsius, means lowering global greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 70 percent compared with 2010 by mid-century, and to near-zero by the end of this century. Ambitious mitigation may even require removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
….For the report, about 1200 scenarios from scientific literature have been analyzed. These scenarios were generated by 31 modelling teams around the world to explore the economic, technological and institutional prerequisites and implications of mitigation pathways with different degrees of ambition.
“Many different pathways lead to a future within the boundaries set by the two degrees Celsius goal,” Edenhofer said. “All of these require substantial investments. Avoiding further delays in mitigation and making use of a broad variety of technologies can limit the associated costs.”
Estimates of the economic costs of mitigation vary widely.
….Cutting emissions from electricity production to near zero is a common feature of ambitious mitigation scenarios.
The Working Group III report consists of the Summary for Policymakers released today, a more detailed Technical Summary, the underlying 16 chapters, and three annexes. Working Group III chapter teams were formed by 235 authors and 38 review editors from 57 countries, and 180 experts provided additional input as contributing authors. More than 800 experts reviewed drafts of the report and submitted comments.”
See 4.2.2 on energy supply: Low carbon technologies including renewables, nuclear and CCS should be increased to 80% by 2050 and 100% by 2100.
Future Today
