‘ Wake- up call’ issued on fossil fuels and catastrophic warming
Canada and the rest of the world need “strong, credible and long- term commitments” to reduce heat- trapping greenhouse gases across the economy and prevent catastrophic global warming, says a new report released Wednesday by the International Energy Agency.
The report — Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2013 — said that global efforts to clean up energy sources had stalled, despite some progress in new technologies such as electric vehicles and a boom in renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind power that is reducing costs.
As a result, it said the world is not on track to prevent global warming of more than two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. This is a target set by governments, including Canada in international negotiations, in order to avoid irreversible damage to the planet’s ecosystems and significant disruptions to the global economy.
In Canada, the report noted that two new projects designed to capture heat- trapping carbon dioxide emissions and bury them underground — also known as carbon capture and storage — had raised about $ 2.6 billion in public and private investments in 2012, an increase of about 33 per cent. But the report said the technology wouldn’t be deployed in the market without better government climate change policies.
“Scaling up CCS to the commercial deployment stage ... will require further government support, in the form of appropriate incentive policies, along with strong, credible and longterm commitments to reducing emissions across the economy,” said the report, which noted some policies were adopted in Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec to make polluters pay.
Without ( carbon capture and storage), the world will have to abandon its reliance on fossil fuels much sooner — and that will come at a cost.
MARIA VAN DER HOEVEN EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY
“There was limited movement in this regard in 2012.”
The executive director of the agency, a partnership of governments that analyzes energy policies said that the fossil fuel industry would need carbon capture and storage — currently being studied as an option to mitigate rapidly rising emissions from Alberta’s oilsands — in order to survive.
“Without CCS, the world will have to abandon its reliance on fossil fuels much sooner — and that will come at a cost,” Maria van der Hoeven wrote in the report.
Van der Hoeven also said the report showed that energy produced today is just as dirty as it was 20 years ago.
“The overall lack of progress should serve as a wake- up call,” van der Hoeven said. “We cannot afford another 20 years of listlessness. We need a rapid expansion in low- carbon energy technologies if we are to avoid a potentially catastrophic warming of the planet, but we must also accelerate the shift away from dirtier fossil fuels.”
The Harper government has delayed plans to introduce regulations to reduce heat- trapping carbon pollution from the oil and gas sector. But Environment Minister Peter Kent recently said the government hopes to introduce draft regulations by the summer.