Group Urges $45 Trillion to Confront Emissions

World governments must quickly start a $45 trillion “energy technology revolution” that could drive up the cost of producing carbon tenfold or risk surging emissions by 2050, according to an study released Friday.

To halve emissions by mid-century, the world would need to build dozens of nuclear power plants a year, bury carbon emitted from dozens more gas and coal plants, and cut the carbon intensity of cars, trucks, buses and planes eightfold, according to the report, released by the International Energy Agency.

Without taking action on government policy, emissions would surge by 130 percent and oil demand would rise by 70 percent by 2050, the agency said, far beyond the level that many experts believe the world is capable of producing in a sustained way.

The report, which was commissioned by the Groupof8 three years ago, lays out the challenge for G-8 leaders gathering in July in Japan, where the government is expected to urge them to agree on a target of cutting greenhouse gases in half by 2050.

“There should be no doubt: Meeting the target of a 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable target,” said the agency’s executive director, Nobuo Tanaka.

“We would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale. It will essentially require a new global energy revolution which would completely transform the way we produce and use energy. We need to act now.”

Many scientists say the world must reverse annual increases in greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change including rising seas and more extreme weather.

But governments are at odds over how to split the costs of funding cleaner energy technology, particularly in the developing world. The agency said the $45 trillion was equal to 1.1 percent of average annual global gross domestic product over the period.

“Carbon emissions must be cut,” said Go Hibino, a senior manager at the Mizuho Information & Research Institute.

“Costs of about 1 percent of GDP are not outrageous, so this target is realistic.”

About 190 nations are racing to devise a framework by the end of 2009 to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 37 advanced nations to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012.

A huge research and development effort will be needed in the next 15 years costing about $10 billion to $100 billion per year to develop technology to cut carbon emissions, said the agency, a Paris- based policy advisory group for industrialized countries.

The International Energy Agency said the power sector would need to be “decarbonized” by installing carbon capture and storage at 35 coal- and 20 gas-fired power plants a year from 2010 to 2050 at a cost of $1.5 billion each. The sector would also need to build 32 new nuclear plants and install 17,500 wind turbines a year.

The report comes ahead of a weekend meeting of G-8 energy ministers and their Chinese, Indian and South Korean peers in Aomori, Japan, where they will try to agree on the role of consumer nations in stemming the five-year price rally in oil.

Tanaka said non-agency members like China, India and other developing countries must conserve energy to achieve the target because they were already big emitters and were likely to emit more.

Hibino, the Mizuho manager, added: “Some kind of financial facility or some scheme is needed to help developing countries participate more easily. It would be hard for the IEA to achieve the goal without the participation of developing countries.”

Originally published by Reuters.

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