Climate change repair bill: 1$72 trillion'

Canberra Times
Tuesday 3/2/2009 Page: 4

Leaders told to use recession to `shake out' energy sector
World leaders must adopt a more ambitious approach to clean energy technologies, and end the perverse subsidies that reward utilities for pumping out dirty energy, the World Economic Forum says. In a 300-page report outlining the key challenges discussed at the five day summit of world political and business leaders in Switzerland, the forum urged governments and investors to create "a level-playing field" for clean energy.

The economic forum called for a global investment of $US45 trillion ($A72 trillion) in green energy to redirect public and private investment to cleaner technologies. "Sustainable energy is here to stay and should no longer be called 'alternative' energy," the forum's global agenda statement said. It estimated sustainable energy could provide more than 50% of the world's energy needs within 40 years, but "substantial obstacles remain in the form of perverse subsidies and other policy distortions that favour incumbent, usually dirty form of energy".

The forum stressed the need for governments to commit to reducing world greenhouse emissions by up to 85% by 2050 to limit the global average temperature rise to 2 degrees. It warned that failure to address climate change within current efforts to address the financial crisis would be catastrophic, causing "irreversible changes to our planet's ability to sustain human development".

The forum also said the financial crisis could force a "useful shake-out" in the energy sector, leaving a stronger, more vibrant, clean technology sector in its wake, with the economic downturn already creating a "brain drain" away from the IT industry to energy innovation. "The volatility in fossil fuel prices may even lead to investors and governments seeing value in renewable energy sources as a useful longterm hedge on energy prices," the forum report said.

United Nations World Food Program executive director Josette Sheeran told the forum, "The carbon-based energy paradigm of the last century, upon which we have grown rich, now looks increasingly unsustainable .. .

But the financial crisis and "looming world recession offer an opportunity for a structural change in how we manage our world economy, and not just in terms of our international financial institutions", she said. Extraordinary economic growth had been achieved over the past 50 years by "systematically under-pricing the goods and services we derive from our planet's natural resources", she said.

The forum's council on biodiversity estimates ecosystems are being damaged at an unprecedented rate, with forest clearing alone accounting for losses of "natural capital" worth $A7.2 trillion a year.