Action Needed Now to Secure Energy Future

Securing the world's energy future will take immediate action to reduce and capture carbon emissions, develop renewable energy technologies quickly and provide the Earth's poorest people with basic, modern energy services, according to a report released today by an international association of science academies.

The InterAcademy Council, a group of world science academies created in 2000 to provide advice to governments and other institutions, released its report, "Lighting the Way: Toward a Sustainable Energy Future," during an international teleconference on Monday morning. Commissioned by the governments of Brazil and China, the report identifies the key energy challenges facing the globe and recommends actions for addressing those challenges as quickly and effectively as possible.

"Making the transition to a sustainable energy future is one of the central challenges humankind faces in this century," the report's executive summary begins. The report adds the challenge is further complicated by the need to protect natural systems and avoid dangerous climate change, to provide basic energy to more than 2 billion people who currently lack such services and to reduce global security risks caused by uneven distribution of energy resources.

One of the keys to creating a better energy future will be to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and invest more in renewable energy technologies, the report said. Coal, petroleum and natural gas currently provide about 80 percent of the world's energy, and the increasing use of coal for power -- the world's most abundant fossil fuel -- is threatening the global environment.

"The substantial expansion of coal capacity that is now underway around the world may pose the single greatest challenge to future efforts aimed at stabilizing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere," the report stated. Finding ways to capture and store the emissions from coal-fired plants "represents a critical technological and economic challenge."

Governments also need to do more to both discourage today's polluting energy technologies and encourage the development of renewable energy sources, the report added.

"Current worldwide investment in energy research and development is widely considered to be inadequate to the challenges at hand," the report said. "Cutting subsidies to established energy industries could provide some of the resources needed while simultaneously reducing incentives for excess consumption and other distortions that remain common to energy markets in many parts of the world."

While the report stressed that it's critical for governments, researchers, non-governmental agencies and others to take action now, it added that a sustainable energy future is possible with the right support and commitment at all levels.

"Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that current energy trends are unsustainable," the report said. "Aggressive changes in policy are needed to accelerate the deployment of superior technologies. With a combination of such policies at the local, national, and international level, it should be possible -- both technically and economically -- to elevate the living conditions of most of humanity while simultaneously addressing the risks posed by climate change and other forms of energy-related environmental degradation and reducing the geopolitical tensions and economic vulnerabilities generated by existing patterns of dependence on predominantly fossil-fuel resources."

The InterAcademy Council, "Lighting the Way: Toward a Sustainable Energy Future." URL: (http://www.interacademycouncil.net/?id=9481)