Coal news and updates

New climate pledges only buy eight more months before climate tipping point

New global pledges to cut greenhouse gases have delayed by just eight months the moment when the world is expected to breach a threshold that keeps global warming at safer levels, the world's leading energy agency has found.

In a new report the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned collective emissions targets, along with the energy plans in those countries yet to set out new goals, puts the world on track to around 2040 release more greenhouse gases than can be allowed and still have a strong chance of keeping global warming below two degrees.

That is just eight months later than previous forecast, despite a new spate of targets and plans currently being pledged by countries, the agency said on Monday morning.

Countries have agreed to keeping global warming below two degrees through the UN. It is a goal that many scientists say would stave off the worst impacts of climate change, such as ever worsening droughts, floods and sea-level rise.

Through the United Nations, countries are currently submitting new plans to cut emissions for after-2020 in a bid to meet the two degree goal. For example the United States has pledged to cut its emissions by 26 to 28 per cent by 2025 from 2005 levels.

The pledges are coming ahead of a major round of negotiations in Paris later this year where it is hoped a new deal to halt global warming will be signed.

Australia is yet to pledge its post-2020 emissions reduction target to the UN, with the Abbott government saying it expects to do so next month.

The agency says its findings underscores the need for countries to submit ambitious climate plans for the Paris meeting. If stronger action does not emerge then the current path would take the world to 2.6 degrees of warming by 2100, the agency said.

The  study goes on to reveal that under the current pledges emissions from energy - which includes electricity generation and the use of oil and natural gas - would slow, but would not peak by 2030. The link between the growth of the global economy and energy emissions would weaken, but not break.

Renewable energy would become the leading source of electricity by 2030, with investments in technologies such as solar and wind forecast to be 80 per cent higher than at the turn of the century. But the amount of power that inefficient coal power could produce will only dip slightly.

Emissions from global energy production could instead peak by 2020, the agency says, if efficiency is improved, construction of new inefficient coal plants are banned, and fossil fuel subsidies are phased out by 2030.

Global investment in renewable energy would also have to be increased from $270 billion in 2014 to $400 billion in 2030.

source: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au