The potential for renewable energy to deliver in large energy economies

http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/15294

The debate on climate change has clearly entered a new phase. There is no longer a doubt about the real threat of a human-induced climate catastrophe and that action to avert this threat is urgent. And this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has raised the bar again: by the middle of this century, global greenhouse gas emissions must be at least halved.

A major share of the potential for climate change mitigation lies in the energy sector. In the short term, energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RE) technologies are the major options that are ready and available now and which, when sustainability criteria are applied, do not have adverse effects.

And the tides are turning. Current annual global investment in RE power production assets is surpassing that in nuclear and most fossil technologies, even when large hydropower – an already established RE technology – is excluded.

Twenty large economies consume 80 percent of the world’s primary energy and produce a similar share of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. An increase in the use of RE and EE technologies in these countries will pave the path to a low-carbon world.

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