COPENHAGEN — The unrestricted use of fossil fuels must end soon if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change, the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)revealed. The new report from the IPCC urges that by 2050, most of the world's electricity must - and can - be produced from low carbon sources. Fossil fuels, without carbon capture and storage (CCS), should be phased out "almost entirely" by 2100. The short Synthesis Report was published on Sunday in Copenhagen, after a week of intense debate between scientists and government officials. The report said the world faces "severe, pervasive and irreversible" impacts without effective action on carbon. "It's very clear from the report that fossil fuels have had their day," said Prof Arthur Petersen from UCL and a member of the Dutch government's team in Copenhagen. "Of course it is up to politicians to decide which risks they want to take with climate change, so it is not policy prescriptive in saying that these reductions should take place, but it is absolutely clear that the reductions should take place if you want to limit (temperature increases) to 2C." For electricity production, this would mean a rapid move away from coal and into renewables and other low carbon forms, including nuclear. The report suggested renewables will have to grow from their current 30 percent share to 80 percent of the power sector by 2050. In the longer term the report states "fossil fuel power generation without CCS is phased out almost entirely by 2100". The chair of the IPCC Dr Rajendra Pachauri said greener electricity is key. "If the world wants to go on this pathway of keeping temperatures increases below 2 degrees C by the end of the century, then by the middle of the century we will have to treble or quadruple the use of low carbon or zero carbon energy from renewables, and sources like bioenergy, nuclear and carbon capture and storage." Three previous reports from the IPCC, issued over the past 13 months, have outlined the causes, the impacts and the potential solutions to climate change. The period from 1983 to 2012, it said, was likely the warmest 30 year period of the last 1,400 years Warming impacts are already being seen around the globe, in the acidification of the oceans, the melting of arctic ice and poorer crop yields in many parts Without concerted action on carbon, temperatures will increase over the coming decades and could be almost 5C above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century Politicians have agreed that a rise of 2C is the threshold of danger. In this report the IPCC authors outline a number of routes to keep to that level by the end of the century. Countries will need to adapt rapidly, but almost all scenarios see near zero emissions by 2100. — Agencies
