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Tackling climate change is affordable if all countries act fast, according to the last in a three-part series of landmark reports from the UN.
Ambitious action to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would reduce global GDP growth by just 0.06 percentage points a year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded.
Delays to action or limits on the technology available would increase the price tag, according to the report published on Sunday, which represents a summary of the best available scientific evidence.
“It does not cost the world to save the planet,” report co-chair Ottmar Edenhofer told journalists at a press conference in Berlin.
Emissions rose more quickly between 2000 and 2010 than in any of the three previous decades, the report’s authors found.
To have a “likely” chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, GHG emissions must be cut from 2010 levels by 40 to 70 per cent mid-century, they said. By 2100, emissions need to fall to near zero.
Edenhofer said: “There is a clear message from science: to avoid dangerous interference with the climate system, we need to move away from business as usual.”
The report on mitigation follows summaries of the scientific evidence of climate change and the consequences if it is left unchecked.
Energy secretary Ed Davey called on international leaders to work together “with enforced vigour” to cut emissions and get an ambitious global agreement in 2015. “The longer we leave it, the more expensive it will be to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” he said.
Renewable energy, energy efficiency and carbon capture and storage will all be important to reduce emissions, according to the review. Gas has a role as a “bridge” between polluting coal power plants and renewable sources.
Maf Smith, deputy chief executive of Renewable UK, said wind power was “the most useful tool in the box”. There is more than 10GW installed in the UK, saving 11 million tonnes of carbon a year, he said.
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