John Lanchbery Principal Climate Change Advisor
The climate challenge: Achieving zero emissions. That’s the title of an important speech in London this week by the head of the OECD, in reaction to the new IPCC report on the science of climate change.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is a conservative body, traditionally thought of as the developed world’s country club and reflecting such views, although now working closely with the major emerging economies like China, India and Brazil. Yet Secretary General Angel Gurría’s talk was radical - it sets out a vision for the complete elimination of emissions from the burning of fossil fuels in the second half of the century.
Mr Gurría began with the basic economics which is that addressing climate change now is “a manageable and affordable problem to deal with, and much less costly in human and economic terms than the alternative of unmitigated climate change.” He noted that carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for very long periods and so there is an “accumulation problem” that can only be solved by eliminating such emissions completely, rather than just reducing emissions.
The Secretary General added that energy-related emissions make up the bulk of carbon emissions and that, using existing technologies, they could be completely eliminated. “We can energise the world without interfering in the carbon cycle” he said. “The solar flux reaching our planet – and the secondary flows it sets up in wind, waves and rain – is stupendously large.” However, he pointed out that the world is nowhere near a trajectory consistent with the goal of zero emissions from fossil fuels and that “an awful lot of progress will need to be made over the next two or three decades starting immediately – before 2020.”
Angel Gurria WikiCommons
He then dwelt upon some difficulties. Two-thirds of global electricity generation relies on fossil fuels, as does 95% of its transport. Change is not helped by the fact that we are in a time of fossil fuel abundance and with huge investments in highly emitting technologies. Many governments also have a substantial proportion of their national income dependent on fossil fuel revenues, 28% in the case of Russia.
The OECD thinks that its member governments, and others, face four main policy challenges:
A couple of examples of current challenges. The EU emissions trading scheme has been given far too many emission allowances by member states and so the carbon price has fallen to ridiculously low levels, thus failing to steer action. Alongside this, fossil fuel subsidies to developing and emerging economies were US$ 523 billion in 2011, which is plain silly. So it’s easy to see that most NGOs would agree with the OECD.
Finally, Angel Gurría posed some hard questions. Should governments impose a moratorium on new coal-fired power stations? He implied that they should, unless they have carbon capture and storage provided. He addressed fracking and gas replacing coal, for example in the USA, noting that ‘the question then becomes: how do you ensure that gas is a transitional step towards an eventual goal of zero emissions?’
His conclusion? ‘Any new fossil resources brought to market – conventional or unconventional – risk taking us further away from the trajectory we need to be on.’
That’s something also that many NGOs agree with and want to see action on.