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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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The International Energy Agency is an intergovernmental organization which publishes reports about future trends of energy generation and use which help governments across the world to chalk out energy production plans. The Energy Watch group says that the IEA reports glorify fossil fuels deeming them irreplaceable by renewable energy sources.

The group compared the production projections of wind energy that the IEA presented in the past decade to the the actual growth in wind energy generation.

In 1998, the IEA predicted that global wind electricity generation would total 47.4GW by 2020. This figure was reached in December 2004. In 2002, the IEA revised its estimate to 104GW wind by 2020 – a capacity that had been exceeded by last summer.

In 2007, net additions of wind power across the world were more than four-fold the average IEA estimate from its 1995-2004 predictions.

The IEA report predicts a five-fold increase in wind energy from 2006-2015 but then assumes an abrupt & unexplained downturn in production. A Swiss parliament member also notes that IEA derives most of its employees from the oil industry and raised questions about its intent regarding the energy outlook reports.

One has to question the wind energy growth numbers that IEA puts in its reports. Investments in renewable energy have grown tremendously around the world. The European Union has been very open about its huge investment plans in renewable energy keeping with the emissions reduction targets and the clean energy targets it has set for 2010 and 2020. China has become the largest investor in clean energy, pumping in billions of dollars in building some of the biggest wind and solar energy plants in the world.

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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.

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