New report calls for decisive, concerted, sustained actions to combat climate change

Tuesday, 27 March 2007

Source: WBCSD

Montreux, Switzerland

Policy Directions to 2050: A business contribution to the dialogues on cooperative action ( 25.3 MB), launched today, asserts that the only way to combat climate change is through decisive, concerted and sustained actions between governments, businesses and consumers.

The publication, produced by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), identifies policy options to sustain economic growth while transforming the ways we access, produce and consume energy. Presented as an illustrative roadmap from which routes must be chosen, it explores policy ideas and concepts for the transition to a low greenhouse gas (GHG) economy. It calls for the development and deployment of leading-edge technologies through partnerships and incentives and an approach to mitigate long-term market risk and deliver secure benefits for large-scale, low-carbon, new-technology projects.

“Governments must start building the future policy frameworks, and it is necessary for us in business to begin to respond to those policies in time to meet the future emission reduction targets. We can not continue the ‘you first’ mentality. We need leadership and action by both governments and business,” says WBCSD President Björn Stigson.

Policy Directions to 2050, launched at a key WBCSD members’ meeting here, says that “international efforts on climate change must recognize the sovereignty of national energy policy decisions, but at the same time provide the necessary global context for those decisions and the tools to optimize GHG emissions management. Systematically decarbonizing the global energy mix will require a broad and efficient mix of policies and programs, and there is a need to learn from current approaches and instruments that are being used and continue to evolve at international, regional and domestic levels.”

“The world has reached an unsustainable trend in greenhouse gas emissions, so we now need to take action to decarbonize as much as possible the world’s energy mix. Resources are to be used more efficiently at the same time as we meet growing energy needs,” says Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of French energy company Areva and Co-Chair of the WBCSD's Energy and Climate Focus Area. "For that to happen one key element is to collectively define a global, long-term and quantifiable pathway for annual greenhouse gas emissions. This shared diagnosis could then be a point of reference for the development of national energy and climate policies."

The publication puts forth four policy priorities:

   1. Establishing by 2010 a quantifiable, long-term (50-year), global emissions pathway for the management of GHG emissions.
   2. Closing the gap that will exist after 2012 (when the Kyoto Protocol expires), using the existing international framework as a basis, and modifying it to build up from local, national, sector or regional programs.
   3. Building robust programs at the national level, and in support of the international pathway. Such programs would include encouraging energy efficiency; broadening the range of fuels in the transport sector; and country-wide boosting of awareness and incentives for consumers across all levels of society toward low-carbon products, services and lifestyles.
   4. Developing and commercializing a number of low- and zero-GHG technologies over the coming decades. These will require supporting policies and programs to address technical and cost challenges.

Policy Directions to 2050 explores and introduces ideas for a new international framework and addresses key policy issues within power generation, industry and manufacturing, mobility, buildings and consumer choices, asking three basis questions: What is needed? Why is it needed? How could it work? Through this approach, the WBCSD hopes to stimulate the debate by contributing business insights that can help encourage the required technological and behavioral changes.

"Demand for energy will increase by 60% by 2030. As demand increases, so will GHG emissions. All stakeholders, whether they be customers, shareholders, NGOs or the communities in which we work, will expect us to meet this increase in a sustainable way. But business cannot do this alone; it needs government to establish the necessary policy frameworks to get the ball rolling and put the technology into place," says Eivind Reiten, President and CEO of Norsk Hydro and Co-Chair of the WBCSD's Energy and Climate Focus Area.

The publication is the third in the Energy & Climate series and reflects the WBSCD’s continued engagement with governments in the search for solutions. Earlier publications included Facts and Trends to 2050 ( 1.9 MB) and Pathways to 2050 ( 2.5 MB), which sought to create a basis for dialogue and action by translating the scale and complexity of these challenges into simple, illustrative pathways to 2050. This trilogy has helped a variety of stakeholders think about the ways in which energy flows through the global economy and affects the climate.

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