Green Options

The normally conservative International Energy Agency is now saying that we must act faster to prevent climate change. Not only to prevent catastrophe, but also because the longer we wait, the more difficult and expensive it becomes to achieve the greater and greater cuts that are necessary to keep worldwide temperature rise to 2 degrees Centigrade or a 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit global average.

2 C is the least we can realistically hope and aim for now. This would be less disastrous than the 4 C or the completely catastrophic 6 C (10.8 F) average worldwide temperature rise we would headed for under a business-as-usual continuation of current overall trends in carbon emissions.

Faith Birol, the IEA Chief Economist at the International Energy Agency said that the world must speed up the reduction in fossil energy use and make a transition faster to clean renewable energy, not only because because of climate change but because of growing problems within our energy system and possible implications for the global economy.

According to two unnamed sources as reported in the Guardian—one current International Energy Agency (IEA) employee and one former—the IEA has been purposely painting an overly rosy picture of the remaining available world oil supplies to avoid panicking the public. Apparently this obfuscation has been a result of heavy pressure from the United States.

As one whistleblower put it, “Many inside the [IEA] believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources.”

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from David Hone, Climate Change Adviser for Shell.

I have been in Sao Paulo this week at Sustentavel 2009, perhaps the premiere Sustainable Development event in Brazil, if not all of South America. At the opening I represented the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and then on the first day of presentations I participated in the main climate change panel session.

What is clear is that there is a passion in Brazil for sustainability – from the huge issues they face in the Amazon region to the road congestion in Sao Paulo. Talking with delegates at Sustentavel, it is also clear that the country faces an interesting future in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

Experts call energy efficiency the low-hanging fruit, because it’s cheaper to cut power use than create new energy from fossil fuels like coal.

But our creature comforts — like iPods, cell phones, PCs and plasma TVs — are sucking the life out of advances in energy efficiency around the world, the International Energy Agency says.

In other words, too much fruit is rotting on the vine.

The IEA says in a new “Gigawatts and Gadgets” report that electricity consumption from power-hungry electronics could cause household energy use to triple by 2030. That means increased greenhouse gases from electric generation, and increased electric bills for creating that power.

The Energy Watch group has accused the International Energy Agency of misleading the governments around the world by publishing false data about renewable energy growth.

According to The Guardian, Fatih Birol, Chief Economist with the International Energy Agency (IEA), has candidly revealed his position that world oil demand will start outpacing supply “around 2020.”

Peak Oil — that most controversial and elusive of concepts. Everybody seems to have their own opinion. There are experts on both sides who alternately claim we have at least 30 years before we reach it and those who claim we’ve already reached it.

So, for a top-level official in an agency with the respect of the IEA to state that we’ll reach an oil supply plateau around 2020 is pretty substantial news — especially considering that his own agency has previously stated that the date was 2030.