Governments Face Cost Hurdle To Halve CO2 By 2050: IEA

Tom Doggett, Muriel Boselli

WASHINGTON/PARIS (Reuters) - Governments will have to grapple with sharply higher upfront costs to deploy clean energy technologies and halve carbon emissions by 2050, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.

Action to curb greenhouse gases is going in the “wrong direction,” said the energy advisor to 28 industrialized nations, adding that under current trends carbon emissions would instead double by mid-century.

Many renewable energy technologies cost more upfront but benefit from fuel savings. Wind turbines, for example, are cheaper to run but face higher capital costs than conventional power plants. The report did not specify where the extra initial capital would come from.

“The next decade is critical,” said its Energy Technology Perspectives report.

“If emissions do not peak by around 2020 and decline steadily thereafter, achieving the needed 50 percent reduction by 2050 will become much more costly. In fact the opportunity may be completely lost.”

The IEA said action to halve emissions and so help avoid more dangerous climate change would require 17 percent more investment, but the extra $46 trillion through 2050 masked fuel savings of $112 trillion compared with no new climate policies.

Such savings would help boost countries’ energy independence as well as mitigate environmental hazards posed by fossil fuels, illustrated by the BP Gulf oil spill, said IEA chief Nobuo Tanaka.