We live in a world that cannot function without energy. How do we make energy choices for a future of an economically prosperous and safe climate world for all of humanity? Is the alternative a world that is ecologically ruined with an unsafe climate globally? The likely consequence of an unsafe climate is economic disruption.
The industrialised, mobile and digitally connected world of today has been built with energy derived mostly from the burning of fossil carbon, namely oil, coal and gas. The resulting emissions of carbon gas into the atmosphere and oceans are warming the planet and resulting in an unstable climate globally with vast ecological destruction. Emissions from burning fossil fuels for energy account for 70 per cent of all global warming emissions. A safe climate future demands a clean, low carbon energy future.
We use globally a massive 18TW (trillion watts) of energy continuously all year around. This energy use is predicted to almost double by 2050 to 30TW. By comparison the entire land and marine plant life of the Earth uses about 100TW continuously of solar radiation. This comparison shows why there is a push to make the world’s energy use 100 per cent renewable by using solar and other clean energy sources like wind. In theory we should be able to meet all our energy needs with solar radiation and other sources of renewable energy. This is not immediately feasible with today’s technologies.
The challenge is that solar and other renewable energy sources mainly produce electrical energy. Whereas the world’s energy balance as at this year is only 17 per cent electrical, the other 83 per cent of energy applications, such as transport, building heating, industry and agriculture use mostly primary carbon energy. The world must be transformed into predominantly an electrical world to make a clean, green energy future. This transformation will take several decades. The International Energy Agency estimates that by 2050 the electrical share of energy use in the world needs to reach 30 per cent based on at least 70 per cent renewable energy. Only then will we possibly keep global warming below the international agreed safe limit of 2OC.
The claim that a temperature rise of 2OC is safe is contested by many climate agencies. At the Climate Restoration forum in Melbourne in June this year it was explained that the world is already outside the Holocene stable climate age with a 0.8OC temperature rise. It was during this stable climate age that humanity evolved culturally to the modern society of today. There is no reason to expect that a 2OC temperature rise will be safe. Humanity has never lived on such a hot planet. Evidence of unstable climate is already apparent in Australia and worldwide.
The need for a clean renewable energy future is urgent. Even with a massive investment in renewable energy and a decarbonisation of our lifestyle we will still probably reach or exceed the 2OC “safe” limit. That investment would focus on closing older coal fired power stations, building wind farms and solar plants and electrifying transport. The threat to the world by staying on a high carbon path is a rise of 4OC or even 6OC warming by the year 2100. Both scenarios are cataclysmic for life on Earth.
There are some optimistic signs that our global leaders are moving to build a safe clean energy future. President Obama has moved to reduce carbon emissions from coal fired power stations. China is taking world leadership by capping its use of coal and moving strongly into renewable energy sources of solar, wind and other low carbon energy sources. China is also starting to price carbon. There are signs of a movement by many world leaders to reach an international agreement on carbon pricing and drastically reducing carbon emissions. These are matters for negotiation at the next climate change conference scheduled for December 2015 in Paris.
Meanwhile, Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott is working hard to keep Australia as a strong carbon based economy. His actions to remove the carbon tax with its planned transition to carbon trading and to fill many senior government positions with climate sceptics is building a carbon framework for a dangerous future. Fortunately the Clean Energy Funding Corporation, the Renewable Energy Target and Agency seem likely to be protected by the Senate. Still the loss of a strong mechanism to price carbon leaves Australia without an adequate policy framework to encourage the necessary investment in clean energy.
The failure of our government to act decisively to move Australia towards a clean energy future will endanger the prosperity of future generations and put at risk the investments of future retirees. According to the Asset Owners Disclosure Project, the top pension funds worldwide have about 50 per cent of their investments in carbon assets and only 2 per cent of their investments in clean energy assets. This imbalance in investment is due to a perceived low risk assessment for carbon assets, which is likely, if not certain, to change in the coming decades as governments phase out their subsidies for carbon assets and move to price carbon. It is likely that many of these carbon assets will be devalued or even stranded in the decades ahead.
The future of the world is an energy future and the only viable long-term path for a safe prosperous future, is a clean energy future. The International Energy Agency estimates that the net benefit of capital investment less fuel savings to decarbonise adequately the world by 2050 to keep our climate and economic future safe is $71 trillion.
The counterforce is, of course, the invested value and wealth produced by the carbon industry. Only strong government policy globally can change the world’s direction away from carbon energy to a safe, clean energy future.
We are faced with choices. A clean energy future is a foreseeable reality of life. We all have to act in the way we use energy in our homes, in our transport choices, in our political choices, and in our investment choices. Australia as a strong carbon economy is very vulnerable economically to a global move away from carbon energy and needs to responsibly manage its transition to a clean energy future. The choice is between a safe, low-risk, and a dangerous, high-risk, future.
