WORLDWIDE pollution from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is set to double in less than 30 years, stoking up global warming, says a new assessment by the European Union.
The forecast claims to be the most detailed investigation yet into future energy trends. It predicts that in 2030 the world will be more dependent on fossil fuels than today, and the proportion of energy from renewable sources will be declining.
The forecast, from a consortium of research teams from France, Belgium and Spain, envisages that business and technical change will continue as usual, and assumes countries will make only desultory efforts to meet the Kyoto Protocol, which has not yet been ratified by enough countries to bring it into force. In effect, it predicts the kind of world the current US administration is campaigning for, with unrestricted market forces and technological innovation dictated by commercial need.
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Europe’s research commissioner, Philippe Busquin, says the report’s findings cannot be ignored, and has called on governments to redouble efforts to develop new, clean energy sources, including fuel cells and hydrogen power.
The study predicts that CO2 emissions will rise by 2.1 per cent a year over the next three decades, compared with a 1.8 per cent annual rise in energy use. There are two main causes for this surprising backward step in carbon efficiency. The first is a doubling in the use of coal, which will remain cheap and abundant, while the price of more carbon-efficient gas and oil rises. The second is a decline in the share of energy from renewable sources, from 13 per cent today to 8 per cent in 2030, due primarily to rural people in Africa and Asia burning more fossil fuel and less firewood as forests disappear or they move to cities.
The rise of renewable sources – especially wind power, which will produce 4 per cent of the world’s energy by 2030 – will not keep pace. Nor will the adoption of more efficient ways of using fossil fuels, such as by combined-cycle gas turbines.
The researchers expect energy use in the US to increase by 50 per cent, and in the EU by 18 per cent. Developing countries, particularly China and India, will triple their energy use, increasing their contribution to global CO2 emissions from 30 per cent in 1990 to 58 per cent by 2030. Measured by emissions per head of population, however, they will still be significantly more frugal than most industrialised countries.
The World Energy, Technology and Climate Change Outlook report does offer hope, however. A global assault on energy waste and a bigger, directed effort to adopt new renewable technologies could halve the expected increase, it says. But that will make hardly any progress towards the 60 per cent cut in emissions that scientists say is necessary before the end of this century to halt climate change.
A start could be made by bringing the Kyoto Protocol into force, to limit greenhouse gas emissions. But that remains in doubt. This week the environment group WWF accused the Russian economics minister, German Gref, of single-handedly blocking the protocol by refusing to submit it to the Russian parliament for the ratification. If Russia does ratify treaty, enough countries will have done so to bring it into force worldwide.