IPCC wrap: the need for emissions-negative energy
The world may have to rely on “emissions-negative” energy technologies in the latter half of this century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s new report on reducing the impacts of climate change.
Swapping fossil fuels for plant material, and then burying the resulting carbon dioxide to avoid it entering the atmosphere, is the kind of tactic that could help put world greenhouse emissions into reverse, said report co-chair Ottmar Edenhofer, an economist at the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research.
However, he added that the world will need “a broad portfolio of options” if it is going to make deep enough emissions cuts to meet the internationally agreed target of limiting long-term warming to 2 degrees.
Those options include market-based solutions such as carbon pricing, moves towards renewable energies and other alternatives such as nuclear power, and other technological fixes that have yet to be widely deployed, such as carbon capture and storage.
Edenhofer stressed that the IPCC does not make policy recommendations, but rather sets out the options so that politicians can make informed decisions.
Edenhofer said the IPCC’s calculations suggested that limiting global warming to 2 degrees was likely to stunt world economic growth by between 1-5 per cent, relative to its current rate.
Concerted action was needed to curb the current “business as usual” trajectory, he said. “We are not running out of fossil fuels, and we cannot expect that the fossil fuel market will solve the climate problem.”
Edenhofer also stressed the importance of international cooperation: “We can do a lot at the national scale, at the city scale, at the regional scale, but at the end of the day what we need is global agreement.”
Old and new technologies
Matt Watson, a senior lecturer in natural hazards at the University of Bristol, sounded a note of caution about techniques to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere:
IPCC author Richard Harper, of Murdoch University, said the report shows how land-use changes can also contribute to curbing emissions.
Ethical considerations
For the first time, the IPCC has factored in ethical considerations, as well as economic ones, when considering emissions mitigation.
Glenn Albrecht, director of the Institute for Social Sustainability at Murdoch University, said:
Griffith University psychologist Joseph Reser said the issue was personal, as well as international.
The impact on Australia
Hugh Outhred, a senior visiting fellow at the University of New South Wales, said Australia is heavily dependent on fossil fuels for both energy and export.
Liz Hanna, a fellow of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, described action on climate change as an “economic and moral imperative”.
These expert reactions were compiled with the help of the Australian Science Media Centre. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here.