14 June 2011 | Ethan Nechin
Carbon, Climate Change, Legislation

 

Mr. Pachauri told the Reuters Energy and Climate Summit:  "[renewables] are already viable in a number of applications”,  yesterday, June 13.

His speech follows an IPCC report which was released last month stating that renewables, with right policies, could provide up to almost 80 per cent of all energy by 2050. If policies were not implanted, the number would plummet to 15 per cent.

He said that renewables are about risk taking and compared the risks to oil companies who are not shy of investing in far fetched exploration for oil that in many cases come up with nothing.

He said that rising CO₂ emissions make it hard to keep to a maximum global average temperature rise below 2°C. "Two degrees has significant impacts on agriculture; particularly in the sub-tropics and tropics," he added.

Mr. Pachauri also talked about the International Energy Agency (IEA) report which was released last month stating that CO₂ emissions are higher that ever.

"It's really a question of getting our mindsets attuned to the challenge that we're facing, and how we might be able to tackle these challenges effectively."

"Why is it that we are not doing the same with renewable energies where the benefits are so overwhelming?" he added.

Policy, he argues, is key to promoting green technologies and a shift to renewable energy:
"[Policy] could bring about fairly rapid movement in the right direction there could be some kind of snowballing effect."

The IPCC report from last month estimates that renewables account for 12 per cent of total global energy supply in 2008 and 19 per cent of renewable electricity.

In order to see growth in this field, regulations such as feed-in-tariffs, quotas, priority grid access, building mandates, and biofuel blending requirements criteria should be implemented.

Other governmental policy areas should involve tax incentives, subsidies, more cap and trade schemes and direct government payments.

The report shows that in places that these regulations were implemented, such as in the EU Energy Trading Scheme (ETS), major development was made in a short period of time.

Pachauri stressed that if governments continued to respond positively to the IPPC recommendations regarding policy, a further co-ordinated policy across different sectors would be made, including not only in renewable energy but also in green technology and transport and sustainable development.

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