How to halve CO2 emissions without nuclear power and new coal: World first energy ‘blueprint’ launched

Just days before a key meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the report ‘Energy [R]evolution: A Sustainable World Energy Outlook’, sets out a viable strategy for cutting global CO2 emissions by almost 50% within the next 43 years while providing a secure and affordable energy supply and without sacrificing economic well-being. The findings of the report, launched in Brussels by Greenpeace International, the European Renewable Energy Council and the prestigious German DLR institute, are endorsed in the foreword by Dr R. K. Pachauri, chair of the IPCC.

The report finds that the potential for reducing energy use in wealthy countries like Australia is enormous, and concludes that the OECD countries will need to cut greenhouse pollution by 80% to allow for increases in energy use in the developing world. The scenario also demonstrates that renewable energy, in particular solar power, solar thermal, biomass, geothermal and wind power, could supply 70% of the region’s electricity, compensating for a complete phase out of nuclear energy and brown coal. Wind will be the most important single source of electricity generation by 2050.

Catherine Fitzpatrick, Greenpeace Australia Pacific energy campaigner, said: “The only obstacle to Australia being fully powered by clean green energy is the lack of political will. We have a renewable energy industry waiting to compete fairly against a heavily subsidised coal industry. As new environment minister, it’s Malcolm Turnbull’s challenge to implement such a blueprint to tackle the drought and bushfires caused by climate change.”

“The Energy Revolution scenario comes as the world is crying out for a roadmap for tackling the dilemma of how to provide the power we all need, without fuelling climate change,” said Sven Teske, energy expert at Greenpeace International. “We have shown that the world can have safe, robust renewable energy, that we can achieve the efficiencies needed and we can do all this whilst maintaining global economic growth and phasing out damaging and dangerous sources such as coal and nuclear. Renewable energies are ready to go and economically competitive, if governments phase-out subsidies for fossil and nuclear fuels and introduce the ‘polluter-pays principle’. We urge politicians to ban those subsidies by 2010.”

The report also finds that energy services for the two billion people globally who have no access to electricity would be improved, and that developing nations could continue to grow whilst reducing emissions.