ABU DHABI // Experts and leaders in sustainability have called on government and private sector entities to invest in renewable infrastructure over the next 20 years.
Presenters at the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) conference in Abu Dhabi, part of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, said the changes must be made if the world is to stay within the 2°C temperature increase cap.
“Please now know that climate change has a profound impact on political, economic and social issues that will shape our global development in the future,” said Adnan Amin, director general of Irena. “Undeniable evidence, and I underscore undeniable, for the need of action continues to mount.”
He cited recent news that 2014 had been the hottest year worldwide since record-keeping began in 1880.
A climate change agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said emissions are at their highest level in more than 800 years and must fall by 40 per cent by 2030 in order to meet the 2°C threshold.
Mr Amin said analysis showed that if renewable energy globally could be doubled by that time, “We can remain below the 450 parts per million of carbon emissions in the atmosphere”.
That number is used as a target for maintaining a baseline environmental scenario. Past that, the global scenario begins to go beyond what the OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050 report has identified as critical “tipping-points.”
“Such a high temperature increase would continue to alter precipitation patterns, melt glaciers, cause sea-level rise and intensify extreme weather events to unprecedented levels,” the report said. “It might also exceed some critical ‘tipping- points’, causing dramatic natural changes that could have catastrophic or irreversible outcomes for natural systems and society.”
Mr Amin spoke about the need to change the environmental projection, not as a necessity for environmentalists only, but to relieve an economic burden countries worldwide will face. Developed countries, the biggest contributors to carbon emissions, as well as those still developing. must use the government and private sector to integrate climate change mitigation into their national policies.
“As important as 2014 was for climate, 2015, in my view, will be a critical year for climate change, having followed the discussion for 16 years,” he said. “I am absolutely convinced that not since 1992 when we adopted [the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] , have we had a more consequential moment for international climate.”
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN agency. said before the climate summit in Paris in December that governments must assess their contribution to renewable energies in order to meet the temperature goal.
“We know that over the next 15 years, US$90 trillion are going to be invested in infrastructure around the world, mostly in developing countries,” she said. “That investment is going to happen anyway, with or without the Paris Agreement, with or without climate change, with or without renewable energy.”
Ms Figueres said it was in the interest of all attending to make sure that their governments invest in infracture with technology that is sustainable, and “not of the last 50 years”.
The move towards renewable energy is already under way, she said, not solely because of its impact on climate change but because of its financial viability.
“It’s completely unacceptable that 1.2 million people in the year 2015 don’t have access to energy and we know that sustainable renewable energy is a much clearer answer to that than extending grids,” she said.
nalwasmi@thenational.ae
