More investment needed in clean energy
11 February 2014
by Richard Forster
Carbon pollution, most of it produced by the world’s cities, is growing faster than the clean energy needed to stop it, the United Nations top climate official this week warned an investor conference in New York.
“Climate change and extreme weather brought on by fossil fuel use not only has dire consequences for the health of the planet; it poses a major long-term threat to the stability of institutional investment funds containing the pensions, life insurance and savings of billions of ordinary people,” said Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
“Ignorance of climate change’s impact on investment portfolios is no longer an excuse. We need to stand up now and make the necessary shifts in capital,” she said.
Figueres was speaking at the 2014 Investor Summit on Climate Risk in New York, which brings together more than 550 global financial leaders to discuss ways to close the gap in clean energy investment.
Cities are by far the biggest consumers of energy, and the biggest polluters, according to the United Nations. A recent Bloomberg New Energy Finance report said global investment in low-carbon clean energy and energy efficiency technologies was US$281 billion in 2013, down 12 percent from 2012, and far short of what was needed.
The International Energy Agency has said that to keep the global temperature rise to under 2°C, the level deemed critical by scientists to avoid a global climate catastrophe, some US$36 trillion, or US$1 trillion annually, was needed in clean energy investment by 2050.
Michael Liebreich, Chief Executive Officer of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said that overall growth in clean energy was down in Europe and the United States from last year. But, he added, investment was up by 20 percent in Japan and was growing in many developing countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Central America.
As to when the first Government pledges in clean energy investment would be announced and whether the private sector would make up for the expected shortfall in funding, Figueres said she expected they would begin during the Secretary-General’s Climate Summit scheduled for 2014 and would continue into the first part of 2015. Such Government pledges would be a good first step, but they had to be expanded to achieve the goal of zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The UN climate chief added that climate change deniers were no longer a real concern because the green economy, spurred by viable clean energy opportunities, was moving forward at the local and national level.
