Huge Investment Opportunities in Energy Savings to Renewables and Reduced Deforestation to Climate Proofing if Markets can be Mobilized.
More than doubling annual improvements in energy efficiency could play a key role in averting catastrophic climate change, a report to environment ministers says.
Over recent years advances and investments in energy savings in areas from transport and power generation to industry and households has been reducing the intensity of energy used by one to one and-a-half per cent a year.
“If the rate of energy efficiency improvement could be increased to 2.5 per cent world-wide it would be possible to keep carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere below 550 parts per million (ppm) through the end of the century,” the findings suggest.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2,000 plus scientists established by UNEP and the World Meteorological Organisation to advise governments, estimates that to avoid dangerous climate change emissions need to be stabilized at between 535 to 590 ppm in 2050.